Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The magazine lay open to a glossy page.

“Exiting one’s twenties used to mean the end of an era for serious athletes of the past,” Oikawa read off. He paused to scan the photo of a burly man, situated in a spacious 1LDK, with teeth that were far too white to be natural. “For the athletes off the present, the thirties are a departure from a previous lifestyle, although to one of greater comfort. No longer will they have to attend rigorous training, but may take on ever- increasing opportunities in sports health, journalism, and premium coaching while maintaining a life of relative luxury and fame.”

Iwaizumi gave Oikawa an unimpressed look from across the coffee table. “You’re already thinking about being a thirty-year-old Olympic has-been? How about putting down Number and focusing on setting up your damn party?”

“I can’t help it, Iwa-chan. I got scouted, and it is my responsibility to now seriously consider my future. Especially so when one considers my imminent eighteenth birthday.” Oikawa got up to set up the tables outside regardless.

“Seriously consider not being full of yourself,” Iwaizumi groused, following him. Oikawa was pleased with his university of choice, and eager to celebrate it at his shared graduation party with Iwaizumi; the day had been half spent making food for the party, and half restlessly contemplating his impending future at university. Mostly, it involved making himself consider that Iwaizumi’s absence at said university would be alright.

He began to set up the banner in the yard outside, split across their neighboring houses. There was a time for growing up and detaching from the supports of the past, and he was apprehensive about proving to be self-sufficient to his new teammates. He was serious about continuing to the Summer Olympics, eventually; he didn’t intend to waste a singular moment in becoming the perfect setter at Team Japan. He was, in fact, turning eighteen tomorrow- an adult.

“Crooked,” said Iwaizumi, re-adjusting the stake on his side of the partition. “There.”

“Have you gotten me any graduation gifts, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa asked as they moved platters of food to the tables outside. It was pleasantly balmy as the day came to a close, and the dying sunlight left a warm imprint on Oikawa’s face, arms, legs.

“Why would I do that? It’s my graduation too.”

“What if I got you a gift?”

Iwaizumi huffed and looked away, slanting his neck awkwardly. “Then maybe I got you a gift too.”

Oikawa smiled. In many ways Iwaizumi was endearingly predictable. He wondered if he would miss this quality once he went to university- he expected them to stay in touch, but Oikawa had come to the conclusion that a cleaner break, if at least for the first semester- would help the adjustment period go by much quicker. He didn’t want to wallow in the shame of the past, with his frequent need for Iwaizumi to be his caretaker; nor did he want to miss Iwaizumi’s style of playing on court.

Missing things meant not playing at ideal form. Oikawa was certain that things would proceed more smoothly if they both truncated contact for a bit, at least for a few months, or the first semester. He only had yet to tell this plan of his to Iwaizumi, but he would see the logic of it, when the time came. It was more likely that Iwaizumi would be so far engaged with his own pre-med program that he wouldn’t have time to fret over Oikawa’s relative radio silence. That was a possibility as well, though one that inspired some level of anxiety.

Oikawa hung up the streamers and balloons, letting Iwaizumi hook-up his iPod to the outdoor speakers. He fell back onto the couch inside, reveling in the feeling of warm cotton on his neck, only lifting open one eye when he felt a weight pushing down beside him.

“We have ten minutes before people start coming in,” Iwaizumi said. He looked chagrined, and the tips of his ears were reddish. This usually meant an embarrassing display of affection was underway.

“Am I getting my graduation gifts early, then?” Oikawa asked smugly. Iwaizumi grunted and held him by the wrist, pulling him up from the couch and then up the stairs.

“We’re going to my room! Is this some kind of sexual favor?”

Iwaizumi shook his head, the tips of his ears growing even redder. He didn’t look back at Oikawa. “You have a weird sense of humor.”

Oikawa sat on his bed as Iwaizumi rifled through his closet, bringing out a plastic bag and large cardboard box. Oikawa didn’t remember having ever seen them, so he supposed Iwaizumi had stashed it there when he had driven to the market to grab ice for the cooler.

“Firstly,” said Iwaizumi, shuffling back to the bed on his knees, “This.” He drew out something from the plastic bag, and slapped it on Oikawa’s lap. Oikawa grimaced, turning it over in his hands: a new knee brace.

“That is a reminder and a warning,” Iwaizumi explained. “I’m not going to be next to you anymore. So…”

“Can we get to the fun stuff now, please?”

Iwaizumi gave him a pointed look, but eventually moved to open the cardboard box, turning it around slowly. Oikawa let out a small sound of surprise.

It was obvious from first sight that it was homemade, and amateur. The planets were garishly colored, oversized, and made of Styrofoam. The paint was unevenly applied and streaky. It resembled a third-grade project; it was also, simultaneously, heart-wrenching and made Oikawa’s chest feel large.

“There’s you,” Iwaizumi said, pointing to a green alien figurine stuck onto the surface of Mars. Oikawa’s face (printed, and also tinted green- Oikawa guessed the work of Photoshop was at play) was taped over the over-large head, his eyes blacked out and comically big.

“And that’s you?” he asks, pointing to the astronaut figurine beside it with Iwaizumi’s angry face pasted on.

“Exactly. Next to you, being your- space mother, or something.”

Oikawa smiled vaguely at this wording and chose not to respond. Iwaizumi didn’t notice; he was placing in Oikawa’s curling hand a thin, small packet. Oikawa thought at first it was a packet of seeds, as some sort of symbolic beginning-of-new-life metaphor or figurative jab at Ushijima’s old (though still searing) advice. But it was neither of those. It was black and labeled “Shooting Star Wish Dust.”

“Happy graduation,” said Iwaizumi. “And early birthday, I guess.”

“That’s absurd,” Oikawa said mildly, after some time. “Comets don’t create dust that we can readily harvest.”

“Your mouth is about to harvest my foot’s fury.”

“I’m kidding. I just wanted to tease you for being so sentimental today, Iwa-chan. This is very cute and first-year-confessing-girl of you.”

Iwaizumi’s jaw pulsed. “Right. Are you going to use it?”

“I hope you don’t think this gets you out of getting me a gift for my birthday tomorrow too,” Oikawa said, not bothering to dispute that he would eventually try to use it because, in the end, he was the more superstitious of the two. He ripped a neat break across the top of the packet, but the sound of the door ringing interrupted him.

“Those are the guests!” he exclaimed. “Iwa-chan, you don’t mind if I do this a bit later, right?” He quickly set the packet up against the back of the solar system model. “I’ll give my gift to you after the party, I promise.”

 “Uh, sure,” said Iwaizumi, sounding distant. Oikawa dashed out of the room at that; it was one thing for Iwaizumi to be alright with looking like an ungracious host, but Oikawa had invited his future team captain for the event. He had investments in his image already.

He opened the door, his eyes immediately drawn to the chain of little lanterns strung up outside in the front yard. They were doing well to set up the ambience. At the door itself, silhouetted by the orange light of dusk, were Megumi, Kaori, and Aiko- three friends of Oikawa’s- or, as the rest of the team would put it, members of his fan club. Oikawa resented that sentiment. It was true that he wasn’t close to many of the girls that trailed him, but he made something of an effort to be courteous after his last girlfriend told him off for using women for an ego boost. Iwaizumi had snickered at length upon hearing that. He had neglected to discuss whether she had a point.

“Junko and Kaguya and Azusa will be here soon,” Aiko assured, walking in, purposely brushing too close to Oikawa in greeting. She was the most forward of the group, with her frizzy auburn hair flying everywhere. Oikawa liked her best for her confidence; he smiled at her and put an arm around her in casual greeting as they walked outside. Megumi and Kaori shared a look between them before following. In the distance, Oikawa saw nondescript, tall figures quickly approaching and shaping into the familiar form his old team.

“Hello, you absolute piece of shit,” Hanamaki said dryly in greeting. “Where is the free food I was promised?”

“And drinks,” added Matsukawa. He glanced briefly at Aiko, still under Oikawa’s arm, and smiled. “Hello, Aiko-san.”

Aiko nodded at him. “Matsukawa-kun.”

“One wonders if she’ll finally bed the reverent Oikawa-san tonight,” Hanamaki murmured into Oikawa’s opposite ear, while Aiko was on her phone. Oikawa slapped at him, but he deftly pulled out of the way. Matsukawa, despite being too far away to have heard, smiled knowingly.

“If someone else doesn’t try to first,” he said lowly, looking over Oikawa’s shoulder. Oikawa frowned, opening his mouth to wonder, only to be interrupted by-

“It’s my party too,” Iwaizumi grumbled, coming up behind Oikawa. “And no one’s greeting me.”

“Hi, Iwaizumi,” said Hanamaki. “Please, where is the food?”

“And drinks?” added Matsukawa, again.

Iwaizumi scratched the top of his head. He glanced briefly at Oikawa, and his throng of girls (somewhere in the conversation Junko and Kaguya had slipped in), and blinked. He turned back to the team. “The pizza’s on the way, the drinks are on the far cooler. You freeloaders better have nice grad gifts.”

“You can decide that,” Hanamaki grinned, slipping away with Matsukawa.

Kyoutani, Yahaba, and Watari came some time after that, and greeted both Oikawa and Iwaizumi briefly. The party began progressing better as more and more classmates dropped by and temperature dropped, and after a half-hour Aiko slipped away to join her friends around the bonfire. Oikawa began to feel concerned, that perhaps he had given the wrong address, or wrong time-

“Hello, Oikawa-san,” boomed a powerful voice, accompanied by a sudden and heavy weight on Oikawa’s shoulder. Oikawa tried his best not to squeak, and turned to see a gathering of older men. Oikawa just barely measured up to their daunting size. His knees felt weak.

“Ah- Matsuoka,” Oikawa said easily in spite of the swirling disquiet in his stomach, turning to shake the hand of the captain of his team starting the next school year. He had short, close-cropped dark hair, and thick eyebrows. “I’m happy you made it.”

One by one, the rest of the team introduced themselves to Oikawa. He could feel Iwaizumi watching on, from a distance, as with the rest of the Seijou team. Hanamaki eventually stepped forward, and this broke the tension a great deal; but Iwaizumi held back, and did not even look torn about it.

The novel thought that Iwaizumi may be jealous of him passed through Oikawa’s mind, and its presence left him stunned for a moment. Surely Iwaizumi wouldn’t let something as inconsequential as jealousy stop him from introducing himself to Oikawa’s new life. The irony of this statement was not lost on him, however, and he unconsciously squeezed his cup, and then set it down before he could spill it on himself.

“Something wrong?” asked Aiko, wandering toward him. “You seem tense.”

“No, I was thinking about something.”

“What something?”

“Nothing important.”

Aiko grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the bonfire. “Spend some time with us girls, then. You’ve been talking about volleyball too much.”

“Is there such a thing?” Oikawa speculated. Aiko rolled her eyes and sat him down on a lawn chair by the bonfire, seating herself on its arm. Around the fire were the rest of the girls, and as Oikawa sat there longer, Iwaizumi eventually materialized in the corner with Matsukawa and Kyoutani (Hanamaki, Oikawa assumed, was still hitting it off with the rest of his new team). Most notably, though, was Matsuoka’s appearance, in the far back. He seemed to be caught in a quiet conversation with Matsukawa.

Iwaizumi had remained oddly silent around Oikawa for the duration of the party, and this realization bothered him again. He watched the deep yellows and red of the fire reflect across Iwaizumi’s face; his brows were furrowed, as per usual, and he was picking at his shorts. It was irksome that Iwaizumi couldn’t put up some semblance of sociability for their last party together as graduates, especially when considering the amount of labor Oikawa expended in setting Iwaizumi up on awkward dates with girls, integrating him into conversation at the few college parties they had snuck into, and generally constructing his social life. Feeling vindicated, he placed his hand on the small of Aiko’s back. He meant to go down the usual road of light teasing.

“Weird, isn’t it?” he said levelly. Iwaizumi looked at him from his place on the grass across the fire. “That Iwa-chan went through all of high school without ever getting a girlfriend!”

He expected a laugh, or titters, but an awkward silence fell upon the area. “Oikawa,” Aiko said, frowning and hushed. She appeared affronted. “That’s…”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Oikawa backpedaled. “Just that Iwa-chan’s too uptight, you have to agree with me there…”

Even Matsukawa was looking weary. But Iwaizumi had the oddest reaction of all; he wasn’t throwing a fit over the harmless jab, like Oikawa intended. He wore a cool expression, and his eyes were steely.

“It’s not that weird,” Iwaizumi said, eerily calm, “Considering I spent most of my high school career running around being your babysitter. I didn’t have time for anything else.”

There were only a few pithy words in his response, but they managed to make Oikawa feel very small immediately. In light of recent decisions, and thoughts, it was outright humiliating. He scowled. “That sounds an awful lot like an excuse for something, Iwa-chan.”

Matsukawa leaned in to whisper something in Iwaizumi’s ear, but it didn’t seem like Iwaizumi was listening. He shouldered him off.  

“You being a reckless child is a pretty decent excuse,” Iwaizumi said. He began to stand up, but not to lunge at Oikawa. “I really don’t know if you can even handle- well. Whatever. I hope you find a decent new keeper with your new team.”

Iwaizumi walked off at that, and Matsukawa and Kyoutani followed. Yahaba (who had appeared somewhere right before Oikawa began the altercation) stayed, but he looked a little dazed to have heard what he had heard; he was staring blankly at Oikawa, his hands clenched on his knees. The other girls were inelegantly shifting and looking down into their phones. Matsuoka cleared his throat, his thick eyebrows raised at Oikawa, before also walking off awkwardly.

“What the hell, Oikawa,” muttered Aiko, tugging on his arm. She was peeved. “That’s crossing a line, even for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean.” And he didn’t. Not really. He had never quite gone so far as to make such a risqué accusation in the form of a joke, but he had meant it as just that. A joke. He hadn’t anticipated such an overreaction.

“Really? That’s just so inappropriate, I would think- you, of all people, would know that-” and then she cut herself off. She stared at Oikawa, searching his face. Her mouth opened in a little, glossy ‘O’. “Wait- you… he’s told you, right?”

Oikawa blinked. “Told me what? Who?”

“Er,” said Aiko. “Well. That’s not my business. Or responsibility. So I’ll just-” and like that, she slipped off the arm of the chair, brushed down her plaid skirt, and walked away briskly.

“What?” Oikawa said to her retreating figure. He turned to the other girls, still in the chairs beside him. “What did she mean?”

Kaori blew a bubble from her bubble gum, and Megumi shrugged unconvincingly. Junko appeared to be very invested in her game of Love Live (which she had not been playing until a moment ago). Azusa and Kaguya- the latter sitting in the former’s lap in one chair- shared a secret look of discomfort, as if they were debating telling- and then Azusa gave a nearly undetectable shake of her head, and the matter was resolved.

“Oh, please,” he said, unimpressed. He turned, finally, to Yahaba, who was still zoned out. “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

Yahaba blinked rapidly back into reality and fixed his gaze on Oikawa. “Pardon?”

“What crucial bit of information has Iwa-chan failed to tell the magnificent Oikawa-sama about this time?”

Yahaba scrunched his nose. “The third-person bit needs to stop, Oikawa-senpai.”

“Just tell me.”

“I don’t think you should hear it from me,” Yahaba admitted. “Maybe… well, talk to Iwaizumi-senpai, when you can.”

But Oikawa was in no mood to talk to Iwaizumi. He had humiliated him- in front of his new captain. This ordeal would denigrate his name before he even had a chance to prove himself. Oikawa hadn’t crossed a line- that he knew of, at least- and it was completely out of line for Iwaizumi to air out his biggest insecurity at a party.

“What a fucking shithead,” Oikawa muttered to no one. By now it was well dark, and beginning to get chilly. The food was dwindling away, and one by one the crowd came to say their farewells to Oikawa and Iwaizumi, although travelling the fairly large distance maintained between the two.

“Well,” said Hanamaki once nearly everyone was gone. In the dark, his strawberry blonde looked bleached out, like sand. “Matsukawa told me what happened. That was sort of daft, even for you.”

“Why is everyone making such a big deal out of nothing?” Oikawa stressed. Enough time had passed that his bluster was replaced instead by a regulatory apprehension on his conscience. In the corner of his eye, he saw Iwaizumi shaking his head at Matsukawa, who was gesturing slowly and patiently. “What isn’t anyone telling me?”

Hanamaki shrugged, and then eyed him at length. “You never were the dense one. I suspect everyone’s unused to having to be the one to break things to you.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll be the one to either?”

“Nice try. But for this… I think that it really is Iwaizumi’s business with you. Happy birthday, though. In advance.”

Hanamaki shouldered him gently, and walked away on that uncharacteristically somber statement.

Matsukawa eventually bade his own goodbye to Oikawa with a distant, “Happy Birthday, stop being a dick, also I ate all your leftovers inside,” but Iwaizumi failed to make such an effort; he threw one intense expression at Oikawa from a distance, and then slipped away into his house. Oikawa stared at this display. It was something of the ultimate insult, to end their shared six years like this. And, he thought, as he cleaned the leftovers from the tables, it was atypical behavior from Iwaizumi. He had experienced Iwaizumi’s wrath one or several hundred times through the years, but Iwaizumi’s apparent apathy was a demon he faced far less. Very nearly never.

The night grew even colder as he made his way inside to his own house. He’d decided to take care of the mess outside tomorrow; along with the relations with his new captain. He texted his mother quickly that the party had gone fine-she would be home with his father the following day, they had some event to attend in the city- and that he’d be sure to clean the kitchen before they came the next day.

His room was the same as he had left it. The cream covers were pushed back, where he and Iwaizumi had sat; by the base of the bed was the solar model, and the knee brace. He pushed these things gently aside with his foot, when he got into bed, and was surprised by a crinkle and sharpness under his back. He reached back only to pull out the comet dust packet- still ragged, where it had been barely opened. 

Suddenly, through the silence, the window thumped.

He started violently and tumbled out of bed, then crawled towards the window. Outside, in the darkness of his side-yard, stood Iwaizumi, turning over pebbles in his hand.

He wrenched the window open. “Stupid Iwa-chan! Are you trying to break my windows?”

“Come down. I need to talk to you.”

Oikawa stared at him. And then: “Oh, fuck off.”

“I need to-”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Oikawa shouted.

“I have to tell you something that I wanted to-”

“Well, you sure missed your chance, didn’t you!” said Oikawa. “We’re going to have to go to bed angry with each other, which I’m sure you know isn’t good for a young healthy couple such as ourselves!”

“That’s the thing-” yelled Iwaizumi back up at him. “Well, not exactly, but-”

“I can’t hear you,” proclaimed Oikawa, putting his hands squarely over his ears. “I’m not letting you ruin my eighteenth birthday, which basically everyone forgot about, by the way! I’m thinking about- I’m thinking about how nice it’ll be to be thirty years old, and have a big apartment, with you not in it!”

“OIKAWA-”

“Shut up!” He threw the wishdust packet outside, hoping to smack Iwaizumi’s stupid big head. “I wish I was turning thirty!” he repeated after it and at Iwaizumi, and grabbed his face in frustration. “Then I’d be famous and I wouldn’t have to deal with you!”

The muted shouts faded away almost immediately. Oikawa drew one hand away from his eyes in curiosity. And then the other. He blinked several times in rapid succession, and then rubbed his eyes and tried again.

“What the fuck?”

The first thing he noticed was that- it was morning. Or- no; the first thing he noticed was that the floor was cherry oak. No, no- the first thing he noticed was that he felt strangely heavy and unbalanced, and that he was not in his room any longer.

“Uhh,” he groaned, and then stopped suddenly, because- surely that wasn’t his voice. He stepped back, and the new imbalance of his body led him to stumble and land directly on his butt. On that cherry oak hardwood floor. Or was it mahogany?

Whatever it was, he stared at it, and followed the grain up to a shag carpet. He was in a large apartment, if the view outside the huge window was anything to tell by- the jagged edges of city buildings cut across it. Before him lay the ugly carpet, on which a modern-looking, curved white leather couch rested. Across this array was an impressively sized TV- one that looked bizarrely flat and transparent.

He looked around more. Integrated speaker system in the ceiling. Little potted cactuses positioned tactfully across the spread. A marble countertop behind him, connected to a beautiful kitchen. Completely white walls, generally expensive-looking décor, and- if his eyes weren’t deceiving him, a jellyfish aquarium situated as a short expanse of wall.

“What the fuck,” he said again, because it bore repeating. His voice was still wrong and too low.

He made his way back to his feet again with much trouble, and he couldn’t help but notice that his feet seemed wider. And his calves seemed rounder. He turned in his inspection, and was met by the vision of himself in a mirror adjacent to the main room.

“Ah!” he cried, covering his mouth with his- apparently now monstrously sized hand. Or, it wasn’t that monstrous, but it had calluses and bigger knuckles and even a light dusting of hair on the knuckles. He drew closer to the mirror cautiously. He toyed with the idea that he was hallucinating, or that it was because he wasn’t wearing glasses, but he eventually could not contend with what was crystal clear in front of him.

It was him. Or a parody of him. His jaw was wider, he was several inches taller, and sporting a bit of scruff alongside a smattering of grey hairs in his sideburns. His hair was cropped closer in the back. His nose was bigger. As were all the muscle groups in his body, from what he could tell through his outfit- a pair of boxers and a tank.

“Oh, no,” he said, tracing his very first impression of a wrinkle. “I’m middle-aged. Oh, Holy..”

He turned around and walked quickly to the coffee table in front of the couch- it had newspapers on it. Maybe something that could shed light on this. He picked the one lying on top, although it looked well-worn.

“OIKAWA TOORU BRINGS JAPAN GOLD IN SUMMER OLYMPICS 2024” was emblazoned across the front.

“Um,” said Oikawa. He could not focus enough to read the article; he had heard people couldn’t read in their dreams, so help felt temporarily pacified by that. But then he read it again, and he could understand the words, they just lacked sense. He dropped it and reached for another that looked newer. The title was something inconsequential about a politician he did not recognize, but the date- the date read November 20^th, 2029. The next paper he grabbed confirmed the year. As did the next.

“Maybe I’m having an amnesiac episode,” he said to himself, wandering across the apartment. A trophy-case stood by the far wall, and inspection confirmed all of the vessels within to be his, in competitions that he had yet to play. Next to it were more newspaper articles, framed and hung on the wall, the majority pertaining to him as well. “Maybe my staggering successes were too much on my mind and I’m having amnesia and I can only remember my life from before I was eighteen.”

“Babe, are you talking to yourself again?” rung out a throaty voice from the hallway.

Oikawa immediately froze; he had not realized, or considered the possibility, that there was another person in the apartment. He crept towards the hallway, and could feel his heartbeat thudding in his ribcage- maybe it was some intruder. Although intruders rarely called their victims-

“Sweet bottom,” sang a half-naked man, walking out from the hallway and into the kitchenette. He was in the process of wrangling on some jeans. “You were talking to yourself again. Also, if you want some protein shake, this is your last chance, or else you’ll be late to work.”

Oikawa’s eyes bugged out at him. It was all so clear now; this man was the owner of this apartment, and had been obsessively following Oikawa’s career to the point of perversion and had kidnapped him to hold him to a bizarre, torturous roleplay of lovers.

Well. It didn’t explain why Oikawa was physically aged himself. But if this was his flat- which he had suspected, initially- then why would he house some man under the impression that Oikawa was his…?

“You alright there, Tooru-chan?” said the man. He had dark hair, and downturned eyes.

“Tooru-chan?” Oikawa squeaked out. “Who even- where am I? Who are you? Why-?”

“Babe, did you not have your coffee yet?” the man said amusedly. “We both know how you are before coffee. Come on. I’ll make you a brew.”

“Like hell you will!” His voice registered in another octave, one that sounded more like his old voice. “You- you- brute! You’ve trapped me here!”

“Is this another one of this I-need-my-good-morning-kiss rituals?” said the man. His mouth twitched. “You know, these are going to start getting old at the rate you do them…”

“No! Absolutely no rituals of any kind!” Oikawa emphasized, waving his arms in front of him. He grabbed a jersey, lying nearby, along with some sneakers and a loose jacket, searched the room for an exit and- ah- he bolted for it.

Behind him, the weird, weird kissy man yelled that he wasn’t going to chase him in only his jeans. Oikawa couldn’t care less; he ran through the carpeted hallway of the building and then ran down four flights of stairs while shoving on the jersey, far too panicked to stop and wait for an elevator. When he ran out of the building’s front doors, however, he slammed directly into some other large, looming figure, somehow even taller than him.

“Ow,” said the voice flatly. “Oikawa, I’ve asked you so many times to take caution when you leave the building in the morning. I’m holding my coffee.”

Oikawa, panting and wildly strategizing how to escape yet another conflict, dared not look too closely at the man’s face. Although it was familiar in the strike of the eyes. “Right. Well. I’ll just get out of your way then-”

“Sweet bottom, please, do you want a protein shake or not?” bellowed out a voice from four stories up. Oikawa looked and saw with dread his captor. Who was still shirtless, for some reason.

“Is that an innuendo?” asked the coffee man. “From what you’ve imparted to me regarding foul wordplay, that seems suspiciously like an innuendo.” The man paused, and his face twisted lightly into disgust. “Oikawa, I’ve also asked you so many times to keep your foreplay private and away from me.”

“I don’t know what the fuck he’s on about,” said Oikawa shrilly. He looked up at the kissy man. “I DON’T WANT YOUR SHAKES, YOU FREAK!”

“Ah,” said the tall man. “You haven’t had your coffee yet. Well. Regardless- are you getting in the taxi or not? You told me specifically you wanted an early start yesterday. I moved my schedule up thirty minutes for this.”

Oikawa hurriedly made his way into the taxi standing nearby on the busy road. He did not want to prolong his altercation with the man from his apartment, and at the very least he could try and guess who this mysteriously familiar figure was.

“So Takemoto-san and you have begun to run into some problems, I assume,” said the man, once in the car. He mentioned some address to the driver across the partition, and then sipped pensively from his cup of coffee. “I was wondering when that would take place. I always told you that commitment takes precedence over whatever flings you’ve been harboring these last few months-”

Oikawa stared at him, and at the passing scenery in the window behind him. From what he could figure, he was in Tokyo. And the man… he had a sort of blunt look about him, a certain piercing quality in the purse of his mouth. His hair was neatly parted in the middle and dark brown, and his eyes were slightly higher on his face.

 “Holy shit,” whimpered Oikawa. “Ushiwaka-chan?”

Ushijima- for it was Ushijima, how could have not told by the regal bend of his face- blankly watched him. Oikawa wasn’t well-practiced with Ushijima’s emotions, but he seemed vexed. “Oh. I thought you had retired that petname after the first year of training for Rome.”

“Rome?!”

“Yes,” said Ushijima. “Rome. The Olympics. Which succeeded our four shared years of training together, during which you said we were conciliated and that you would never call me demeaning petnames again.  That was eight years ago. Are you being sarcastic again? You know I have a hard time with that.”

Oikawa was having a hard time with this. “You- Are you really my friend?”

Ushijima looked confused, and then very unsure and weary. “You got someone pregnant.”

“No!” Oikawa tried his very best to concentrate on not hyperventilating, ignoring Ushijima’s look of relief. “Where is this car going?” he opted for instead.

“To our offices.” Ushijima paused. His eyebrows drew minimally closer. “Oikawa-san, are you inebriated?”

“No. What? No.”

“Is that why you’re wearing boxers and a jersey to work? Granted, the jersey is somewhat appropriate, but it isn’t casual Friday, and I’m unsure how our boss will take to that. Although his sense of fashion and humor are perhaps equally as bizarre as yours.”

“Why do you talk like you’re from the 1800s?” bemoaned Oikawa. “I hate this. Oh, I really, really hate this. I’m only seventeen. Or- eighteen! I was barely eighteen, and now I think I’m dead. I need to call my parents. I was just about to go to university.”

Ushijima fiddled with something on an illuminated, thin wafer of a rectangle. “If you’re going to start lying about your age, Oikawa-san, I think twenty-six was far more believable. Last time you used it. Not to encourage your insincerity, as it is.”

The taxi came to a halt outside a large glass building, and Oikawa scrambled outside after Ushijima.

“I’m serious, Ushiwaka, I’m eighteen. Or I’m having a terrible nightmare. There was a man, in my apartment- and-”

“Takemoto-san?” said Ushijima, flashing his wafer-rectangle at the security lock as he strode in. “Unless you were having another fling… I dislike hearing about that, Oikawa-san-”

“Who the fuck is Takemoto-san?!” cried Oikawa. “Where am I? Why is this happening to me?!”

Ushijima finally looked at him in the eyes. “Oikawa, we have a meeting in approximately twenty minutes. This sort of horseplay is disadvantageous to the procedure of such a meeting. I don’t know what’s ruffled you so thoroughly, but…” He clicked the button for the elevator, and then looked back at Oikawa. “Repeat after me. I am Oikawa Tooru, former Olympic medalist.”

“What?”

Ushijima stared at him unimpressedly.

“I am Oikawa Tooru,” Oikawa echoed. “F-former Olympic medalist.”

“I am going to go to work, and attempt my very best to disguise the fact that I am hungover.”

“I’m not-!”

Ushijima stared at him some more, somehow even more disappointed. Oikawa faintly wondered if there was a limit to this.

“… I am going to go to work, and try not to look hungover.”

“Because I respect my coworkers at Number and hold the future of the company on my back.”

 “Number?!”

He was working as a sports journalist for the number one sports magazine line in Japan, and Ushijima was failing to find this earth-shatteringly shocking. Ushijima rolled his eyes (Oikawa thought he would never see the day) and ran a hand through his hair. “This is hopeless,” he declared. “I am going to emphasize to K-san that I tried very hard.”

With that, the elevator arrived. Ushijima stepped in, steering Oikawa with a powerful hand on the small of his back as he struggled to conceive of it all- the too-large body, the man in his apartment, even the elevator itself, which was glass and impossibly complex looking. And Ushijima, who was currently ushering him out on the fifth level of this building, looked so old and yet open in a way Oikawa had never seen, as if Oikawa and he had been long friends, and that his friendly hand on Oikawa’s body was not something at all peculiar.

The floor Oikawa was all but pushed through was full of faces; some glanced at him as he stumbled past, but most kept to their computers and wafers (which Oikawa suspected were phones), typing away furiously. Situated around the space were hung TVs displaying live sports events, and the one in the corner Ushijima was guiding him to had volleyball plays. For players Oikawa had definitely never seen before. Ushijima took a sudden right into a smaller room. By the looks of the nameplate on the desk, this was Oikawa’s office.

“You have fifteen minutes to get yourself together,” said Ushijima grimly. “I’d advise re-acquainting yourself with that helpful secretary of yours and last night’s papers in that time.”

With that he left, shutting the door behind him. Oikawa turned around and immediately folded in half over the tidy desk. He let out of a woe begotten moan, and then another one after realizing the framed photo closest to him displayed him and that abhorrent man from the flat together, embracing.

Sharp, loud knocking sent him standing back up so fast his back spiked in pain. Outside, a polite voice rang, “Oikawa-san…”

“C-Come in…?”

The door swung open, and before him stood someone familiar, in the same way Ushijima had just been ten minutes ago. He was on the shorter side, and had longer hair than from when Oikawa last saw him, but it was the mole that gave him away.

“Refreshing-kun?” he choked out.

“Workplace policy asserts that you not call me that,” said Sugawara, smiling vacantly in the way overworked minimum-wage workers tended to. He was holding a thin packet delicately between the fingers of his right hand, and a cup of coffee in his left.

“Here are last night’s notes you asked me to type up, print, and laminate. They’re arranged by body of thought, not chronologically or alphabetically, like you wanted. I also got you a gingerbread latte, with the steamed almond milk, as Ushijima-san told me that you hadn’t had your morning dose. Is this all satisfactory?”

“Ushijima told me I didn’t have coffee like, five minutes ago- how did you-”

A harrowed look came upon Sugawara’s eyes that said he, too, didn’t understand how he did his job. He continued his blank smile, which began to frighten Oikawa. The man was utterly dead inside.

“It’s simply according to your requests, Oikawa-san,” he said, unblinking. “Your very specific and detailed requests, that, were I to fail, would result in my termination from the company.”

“…Right,” said Oikawa. “Well, I’m going to- just take that-” and he gently tugged the packet from Sugawara’s clenched fingers, “- and, I’ll go ahead and let you off said requests for the timebeing, because I am in a mess at this moment that you might be able to help me with..?”

Sugawara looked troubled. “Is this like the time you told me that the requests were off, but it was really a test to make sure I was an ‘appropriate secretary’?”

“No, Sugawara, whatever- I really mean it this time. Though- did I really do that?”

He stared at him for an age. “Yes, you did, sir.”

“Sir!” said Oikawa. He added hurried coughs after, trying to not derail the conversation. “Right. Well, just for my own purposes, I’m going to need you to- tell me the date. And what I do here. And what this meeting is going to be on.”

Some of the harangued look left Sugawara’s face, only to be replaced by one of suspicious curiosity. “Are you feeling alright, sir? It’s November 20^th, 2029. The meeting’s about the diminishing market for sports magazines… You know, the one you’ve been talking about for months? As one of the top editors, this is of relevance to your job security.”

At Oikawa’s wide-eyed look, he sighed. Sugawara felt, for the sixth time in the last hour, that he did not get paid enough to handle this. “Right. Well, it’s about the diminishing market and how other sports magazines are taking our market niche. We need to update our demographic targets and change manufacturing to be eco-friendlier in light of the environment. To summarize it quickly.”

“Oh,” said Oikawa with the voice of someone who had forgotten to do his homework, and was now being called to the front of the class to answer a problem. “Right.”

Sugawara eyed him resignedly and left the room, after which Oikawa threw himself to the nearest phone and dialed his home number.

“Sorry we are unavailable, we are on a vacation- at Niwa no Yu- so call us in a week!” is what the ansaphone responded with.

“At an onsen? Without me?” Oikawa groaned, hanging up.

Another brisk knock at his door signified the meeting was starting soon, and Suga escorted him out and towards some sort of meeting room.

“Is there anything else you need?” Suga asked. Oikawa looked at him wildly, nodded, and grabbed a nearby crisp index card. People filed in behind him.

“I need you to find me this guy,” he said, sloppily writing out the characters for Iwaizumi’s name. “Get his phone number, his address, whatever, just do it as soon as possible.”

Suga took the piece of paper, read it, and coughed. “Sorry,” he said. “I was not- expecting… Well. Right. I’ll let you know.”

He left Oikawa with the task of finding a seat at the long conference table. He couldn’t recognize any faces other than Ushijima, but then a man with thick eyebrows walked in, holding coffee, and it was indubitably him. If it were under any other circumstances, Oikawa would be howling on the floor, down for the count. Instead, he blurted out, “Mattsun?”

Matsukawa turned and shot him an incalculable look. His hair was wavier, a bit longer as well. He had dark crescents underneath his eyes. “Hello,” he said strangely, after a moment, and then left to take a seat.

“Oikawa-san, please sit down,” said a man at the front of the table. “We have a tight schedule… Right. So, we all know that print media has taken a significant decline in sales as of recently, which can explain some of our sales loss over the last year.”

The man paused, and brought his hand to his forehead, which was wrinkled by signs of stress. “We have also made Number an online publication, and we still do not have the numbers that are to be expected from the conversion. Does anyone, pray tell, have any idea why that may be?”

Oikawa watched Ushijima attentively scribble on his paper, while Matsukawa tried balancing a pen on its base. He still had that sleepy look about him, but with the added stubble he let grow in, he looked a little boorish. Like a guy who only wore elastic sweatpants at home, and came to formal parties thirty minutes late, wearing tennis shoes.

Well. Some things never changed.

“It’s because Sports Japan is replicating our modality, content, and output while simultaneously selling it for reduced costs, sir,” read off Ushijima straightforwardly.

“Right,” said the bossman. “Haha. That’s exactly right.” He did not look very amused. “Sure, I get it. We all was reduced costs. Or the democratization of information, if you call the stuff we publish meaningful content. But this is costing us real money, which means that unless we get more compensation through those obnoxious adverts on our website, we will go out of business.”

Everyone at the table looked very morose. “So,” he said. “We need a project to redesign our look, and come up with a way to fix this disparity between sales and having a workable income in this terrible year of 2029. Oh Fuck, I’m so old, we are all so old.” He pinched the space between his eyebrows.

“Ew,” said Oikawa.

He regretted this near instantly when everyone whipped their head around to stare at him. “I meant, er, ew about the loss of our jobs, not about the age bit.” This was not entirely true.

The boss stared at him too, withering. “Ew indeed, Oikawa-san. I was actually hoping that perhaps you and Ushijima-san could be in charge of this new project, hm? Making a pitch about how our content should change. What the first article we publish on the redesigned site should be.”

“K- Er- Shacho-san, it would be an honor,” said Ushijima, speaking for him. “Oikawa-san and I will start right away.”

The boss exhaled loudly. “Alright, we’re done, Let’s get the fuck out of here before I get another migraine.”

“I thought those ended once you cut that hair of yours,” said Matsukawa, grinning as the bustle of people exiting began. Oikawa welcomed the familiar sight, although it wasn’t directed at him.

“Don’t talk shit about my old hair,” said the man, pointing at Matsukawa as they collectively got up to leave the room. “It was boss as fuck, and everyone loved it.”

“If it was so boss then why’d you have to cut it off once you literally became a boss?”

“I hate you,” said the boss, leaving the room. “I regret hiring you!”

“Say hi to pudding head-san for me!” Matsukawa yelled out behind him. He too, left the room, going the opposite direction. Suga entered on this note, eyeing them briefly before turning to Oikawa.

“I found what you needed,” he said, placing a small note in front of Oikawa. “I also messaged you with the address in case you want to route yourself there during lunch.”

“He’s close?”

“Sure. He lives in the city, actually. I can set up a cab to drive you, it’s about twenty minutes from here.”

“Yes, I really-”

“Hm. Alright, I’ll do that right now.” He fiddled with something on his little glass panel, glancing up at Oikawa as he typed something in. “It’s… I didn’t know you and Iwaizumi-san kept in touch.”

“We don’t?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t talk about my private life very much, so-”

“Oh, no, you do,” responded Suga. “Especially when you’re drunk. Anyways, the cab’s waiting for you right now. Your lunch is on the counter outside. You should go.”

“How’s the cab already-”

“You really have been in a questioning mood lately! Standard procedure isn’t that interesting, Oikawa-san. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Oikawa left in a rush, eating his lunch within the cab. It dropped him off by a complex of apartments in what looked like Shibuya, and he approached the given building with a great deal of stress and anticipation.

“Is that takeout?” said a gravelly voice through the buzzer speaker after Oikawa rang in. Oikawa’s chest jumped; even through the static, it sounded like… “Buzz twice for yes, I don’t really have time for anything else-”

Oikawa did so and practically sprinted through the door once he got let in, taking the elevator to the fifth floor. What would Iwaizumi do to fix Oikawa’s problem? How had he changed? What would he look like?

Once the door was opened, the build of the man before him was familiar enough for Oikawa to launch himself into his arms. “Iwa-chan, oh, the most terrible thing is happening-”

“What the fuck-” yelped Iwaizumi, stumbling back. He pushed Oikawa away, and took several steps backwards himself. “You aren’t takeout!”

From this distance, Oikawa could see that Iwaizumi had gone through his own set of changes; but they were too numerous to substantiate. Well, perhaps his hair was tidier, and his neck was thicker, and he had bags under his eyes. He also was a bit shorter. Or Oikawa himself was taller. He had a little nick in his eyebrow, and his forehead was a little larger. Was his hairline very slightly receding? Were those glasses perched on the top of his head?

“You…! You…” Iwaizumi trailed off, face morphing into an expression of embarrassed shock. “You?”

He was larger around the shoulders too. His hands were bigger. Everything was a little bigger. Like someone had taken Iwaizumi, and told him to dress up as a parody of a salaryman who worked out too much to expel his frustration with his coworkers at work, but also enjoyed drinking beer very often. He had a healthy amount of stubble.

This was all very much to take in, and Oikawa didn’t know what to say for a moment, and instead opted to mention, “That beard is a terrible idea, and I hate it.”

Prolonged silence. And then:

“Oikawa-san,” said Iwaizumi carefully. Troublingly carefully. “Hello. I wasn’t expecting… is there an emergency happening?”

“Yes,” exclaimed Oikawa, relieved that someone understood the gravity of the situation. “Yesterday I was at our grad party, you know, and then after our fight I woke up and I’m this, and I think I time-travelled, and everything’s different and confusing and Ushiwaka-chan is my BUSINESS partner, and- and there was this naked ugly man in my apartment and I don’t know why-”

“Oikawa-san!” interrupted Iwaizumi. “Slow down. Slow down and please sit. Take five deep breaths. Now.”

Oikawa wandered into the LDK, taking a seat at a small dining table. There was a framed- a framed medical degree, hanging on the wall. He inhaled and exhaled as he did in training; yet every time he saw Iwaizumi watching him as if he was a stranger, he felt the need to hyperventilate.

“Okay,” said Iwaizumi, decidedly more patiently than Oikawa had ever heard from him in his life. “I need you to be honest, and I won’t judge you. What drugs have you been taking?”

Oikawa screamed a little, which wasn’t the best course of action, as Iwaizumi flinched defensively. “I didn’t do any drugs, Iwa-chan, yesterday I was a teenager and today I’m an old man and please put your phone down, do not call the cops!”

“Alright,” said Iwaizumi. “Alright.” He stepped forward suddenly and held Oikawa gently by the jaw, turning his face one way and then the other. Oikawa felt all the more nervous; he felt the genuinely unusual sensation of his own stubble scratching against the pads of Iwaizumi’s sasquatch hands (that had soft finger pads). “Well. Physically you don’t look like you’re suffering from any major high, and you have no temperature. Can you tell me what the date is?”

“No!” shrieked Oikawa. “The date is irrelevant, because time isn’t apparently real! Are you listening to me?!”

“I’m not in the legal or professional authority to judge this in the current setting, but I’m going to say it’s temporary retrograde amnesia.”

“Fine. If that’s what you want to call traversing the literal fourth dimension, I won’t stop you. But the point is that I can't remember my life, Iwa-chan, and I’m here for you to help me remember it. Because this is too much for me.”

Iwaizumi stared at him, simultaneously gawking and scrutinizing. “Oikawa,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “We aren’t friends. We haven’t been for ten years.”

Chapter Text

 “Do you need anything else?” asked Iwaizumi for the fourth time, regarding Oikawa lay in the fetal position on the couch, biting his nails. He had brought him water, and a fluffy pillow, but Oikawa’s gaze had taken on a glassy look. “I don’t know what to say right now. This is… weird. For me.”

“Weird for you? For you! You going this long without yelling at me isn’t reassuring for me either...!”

Iwaizumi choked out an uncomfortable laugh. “Do you want me to be mean to you?”

“I want you to react, at least.”

Iwaizumi turned his head away, stiff again, and the tendons that stuck out in his neck looked identical to how they looked yesterday in the sunset, before he gave Oikawa his present. Oikawa could tell he was trying very hard to not appear upset, or at least upset in the way he used to be; that was, all the time, and by carrying around the expression of an unamused geriatric. This Iwaizumi was holding a placated, if slightly strained, countenance. If it weren’t for the way he was flexing his knuckles, and the reddening of his ears, Oikawa would not have suspected Iwaizumi was unhappy, or cross.

“I think you should go home, Oikawa,” he said finally. He was still looking away. “I don’t think I can help you.”

 “Please. I really don’t know who else can help me, I’m serious.” His throat felt tight.

Iwaizumi flexed his hand again, and let out a tense sound.

“I don’t even know where I live, really. Or how my phone works,” added Oikawa.

Iwaizumi grunted, and turned, finally, a hint of his old frustration returning in the corner of his mouth, scowl lines forming little parentheses around his lips. “I’ll walk you home.”

He figured out Oikawa’s address by tinkering shortly with his phone. It turned out Oikawa lived fifteen minutes away, walking distance, which made Oikawa feel all the more distraught about their lack of contact.

“I don’t understand,” said Oikawa slowly. He hadn’t been in Tokyo all that often, but even then, he could tell things had changed since his last visit. The buildings were either new and geometric in ways he had never seen, or familiar but rather weathered. “How we stopped talking to each other. I mean, the last I remember, we had a fight, but it wasn’t atomic, friendship-ending- I thought we could get it over with by the next day-”

“Oh, it wasn’t that,” said Iwaizumi, looking at Oikawa with surprise. Oikawa noted again that Iwaizumi’s forehead, which he had already considered quite large, was even larger from what one could only assume was the first stages of balding. It made his thought-wrinkles more apparent. “Though that certainly didn’t help. I haven’t thought about that in a long time, actually. I forgot that happened.”

“Then why?”

“We went our separate ways. We had different priorities, futures- you were an Olympian athlete, and I went to med school. We couldn’t have had more divergent paths.”

“So you’re saying we were only friends because we went to the same school.”

Iwaizumi shrugged. “Among other things. We both liked volleyball for a part of our lives.”

When Iwaizumi said it like that, it seemed as though their entire friendship had been a farce, a web of ribbons shredded apart with one casual statement. Oikawa knew that to be false; it was one thing to declare the flimsiness of a friendship a decade past its expiration, but Oikawa remembered a number of things, like Iwaizumi worriedly sitting on his bed, or embracing after a match, drenched in the sweat of victory, or walking him to the corner store on a sunny Sunday afternoon. He doubted those experiences were couched solely in something as base as mutual familiarity.

“That’s interesting,” said Oikawa eventually. “But I’m not sure if I believe that. And you didn’t see me in the last ten years? Even when I went home?”

“I saw you at the corner store back in Sendai once four years ago, and at Tokyu Hands around here about a year ago. And...” A strange expression came over Iwaizumi’s face, and he briefly glanced at Oikawa. “Well, that’s basically it. We don’t really talk when we see each other.”

“That can’t be it,” Oikawa pushed. “We met a third time?”

Iwaizumi shook his head. “No, I was wrong. I was thinking of a time before the last ten years.” He stopped suddenly, and Oikawa realized they were next to his building. “This is you, I think. You know your way up from here, right?”

Oikawa acquiesced half-heartedly that yes, he knew, and they exchanged tense goodbyes.

“Text me when you get up,” Iwaizumi said, somewhat reticently. “I added my number to your phone in case something happens.”

Oikawa longed to make an untoward comment about Iwaizumi being his mom, but he understood this would be overreaching the boundaries of their new relationship.

“Okay,” he said instead. After a thought, he added, “Er. How do I turn on my phone, by the way?”

Iwaizumi muttered something unintelligible that sounded almost like thumbass, and grabbed Oikawa by the arm, marching him into the building.

***

“So I was literally an Olympian.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Iwaizumi, studying the interior of Oikawa’s apartment, with barely masked shock. The kissy man from before had disappeared, though Oikawa suspected he would eventually return. “Congrats on that, by the way. Your parents were very proud, as was Seijou. It’s a gimmick now.”

“I’m a gimmick?” exclaimed Oikawa. He spotted a leather-bound book from the corner of his eye, underneath the living room coffee table, and got down to retrieve it. “Like…”

Iwaizumi shrugged. “Like, the volleyball coaches really juice you for reputation. You show up once a year to talk to the team and encourage them. I’m not clear on the specifics. What’s that book?”

“I’m not sure,” said Oikawa, paging through it. “There are photos. Are these not out of date yet?”

“Out of…? Oh. No, there was a craze in the early twenties, they’re back in style, in a nostalgic sort of way. Some company remade them so that they don’t lose their color as easily, or something. Cheaper to develop too, and biodegradable if you run them under water.”

Oikawa studied these photos closely. They were much like the ones framed and placed around the apartment, but some were more casual, intimate. Him at what looked like practice, next to Ushijima; him and some girl, lazing around on clearly campus grass. Him with his arms around a bunch of men he didn’t recognize.

“I don’t know these people,” said Oikawa.

Iwaizumi briefly peered over his shoulder at the photos, and then drew back again to admire the décor. “Sure you do,” he said to the framed magazine article of Oikawa. “Or, I guess you don’t. But you have to recognize Ushijima. I heard he works at the same place you work. Number, right? Matsukawa told me.”

“Yes, Ushiwaka-chan is very stern and very bossy. You still talk to Matsukawa?”

“I forgot that was the little name you had for Ushijima.” He sighed. “And yes, I still talk to Mattsun. And Makki, sometimes.”

“He didn’t talk to me today.”

Iwaizumi craned his head this way and that. “I don’t know the details of that, but I assume you two have a similar relationship to you and I.”

“So not one at all.”

Iwaizumi didn’t respond, apparently lost in reading one of the framed articles. Oikawa turned to another page, where the central photo was one of him biting his gold medal, smirking, while seated at what seemed to be a nightclub. Ushijima was divesting his tie and shirt in the corner, an uncharacteristically wide smile across his face, and everyone in the photo looked sweaty, drunk, and as if they had been until recently crying from joy. And even though Oikawa could not recall experiencing it, he felt sentimental and misty. “Wow. I got everything I wanted, then.”

“I’m sure I can leave you to it,” said Iwaizumi, staring inscrutably at the wall aquarium. “It looks like you live with someone. They might be better equipped to help you.”

“No!” said Oikawa, panicked. “That’s a whole other thing. There’s a man here, and he was naked earlier, and he called me- well, he called me these names. I think he’s an intruder, and I don’t know what to do with him.”

Iwaizumi stared at him, eyes wide, and let out a bark of laughter despite himself. “Oikawa,” he said, terribly distantly, quickly sobered up. “I’m sorry. But this is really beyond me. Considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He seemed more sure of himself by the moment. “It’s not my business. Look, I really don’t know you, and I’m sure your, er, living partner will be back very soon.”

“I’m serious, Iwa- Iwaizumi, please don’t go. At least tell me the real reason you aren’t my friend anymore. Or why I’m not friends with anyone from before.”

Again, Iwaizumi grew stone-faced and shrugged. “We had different priorities. I don’t hold it against you. You told me… and the others, you know, that it would be better if we stopped talking in university, for the sake of your training, and my studying for med school. You told us at your birthday dinner the day after our party, if I remember correctly. And we never really recovered from that. I mean, honestly, it was dickish, and we thought you’d turn around about it, but you got a better life. That’s it.”

Oikawa could tell he was holding something back, but this was more than he had known before. “That’s cold,” he said, eventually. “Even for me.”

“That’s growing up,” corrected Iwaizumi. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “Now, before your boyfriend comes back.”

What. “What.”

“Oh,” said Iwaizumi. His voice was clipped. “Oh. I- Never mind. I didn’t mean-”

“You mean a friend who is a-”

Iwaizumi tried desperately to backtrack. “I misspoke.”

Oikawa processed this information, once, twice. He made it halfway through a third attempt, and then considered the entire things backwards while gaping at Iwaizumi’s stupid, embarrassed face. “I’m… I’m gay?!”

“Well,” said Iwaizumi weakly. “Specifically bi, last time I heard.”

“I’m gay?” repeated Oikawa. He- he was an Olympic star, a national hero, an acclaimed sports journalist, and… gay? It wasn’t that it was impossible to be all those things, but it was certainly improbable; and there was the glaring issue that Oikawa certainly had never been attracted to a man in his youth, which was everything as of yesterday; he was Oikawa, and Oikawa was not, and had never been, gay. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but that wasn’t him. Or anyone he considered a popular athlete, which he purportedly was.  

Iwaizumi looked remarkably like a tomato in the face. “Just to make sure- you said the last thing you remember was…?”

“Our grad party,” said Oikawa, staring at his hands. His hands, which had probably touched all over that man in his kitchen.

Iwaizumi cringed, and Oikawa could read his internal cursing on his face. “Right. That’s perfect. Listen, er… things are different, now. It’s okay to be gay. Or- it always was, but everyone’s generally more alright with it, these days... or more people, at least… I don’t know, this is-”

“Is this your idea of a pep-talk?”

“I think someone has a vested interest in my unhappiness today,” said Iwaizumi. He took a deep breath, as if to brace himself. “It’s normal. You need to get used to it. I don’t mean for yourself, but- you’re going to have to adjust really quickly, alright? There are a lot of gay people in your life. People we went to high school with, even.”

“You mean me,” said Oikawa. “I’m gay? Are you sure?”

Iwaizumi pinched the place between his eyebrows. “No, I mean me, alright? Me.”

This was like the second bucket of cold water to the face in the last five minutes. “Okay, stop fucking with me…”

Iwaizumi turned his face to the side, in his usual elusive way. “I’m not. You were the last to figure it out, anyways, but- ugh. I’m not reliving this again. I’m gay, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Or- it’s doesn’t need to matter to you. It’s just a part of our lives now. Can you at least understand that?”

Oikawa stared at him, and, in his defense, did not have the motor capacity to assent or otherwise. Iwaizumi’s face scrunched up painfully and then subsided.

 “Whatever, then. I’m going now. Talk to your boyfriend or Matsukawa or whoever the hell if you need to know more. Take care.”

With that, Iwaizumi really did leave; he grabbed his jacket from the kitchen island chair and left brusquely without looking back, the door slamming shut with a conclusive bang.

“I’m gay?”

***

To Oikawa’s relief, the man- who he now knew to be named Takemoto- did not show up later that night. He did text Oikawa, who was rather intimidated by phone he was learning to use, saying that he’d be back in two days after a short business trip.

Oikawa sighed and surveyed his entire flat again. He was not sure what he was looking for; perhaps a sign that it was just a dream, or an equally bizarre way to get back to his time. But knocking the crown of his head against the bottom of the bathroom sink table dissuaded him from checking a fourth time, while simultaneously reminding him all too much of the reality of the situation.

So he had some sort of amnesia. This was not necessarily his most upsetting concern. It was certainly up there, but what really plagued him was that Iwaizumi was a total stranger. That he had accomplished all those things he had only dreamed of a day ago, and somehow without his oldest friend. Or, even beyond that: that he was estranged from Iwaizumi. He could understand if he and Iwaizumi grew naturally apart but kept on good terms, but he knew this wasn’t the case. Alienation had been written all over Iwaizumi’s face when he had walked into his flat.

There was also the matter of being gay. Something Oikawa felt he had to compartmentalize that for the time being, in a mental jewelry box that he wasn’t eager to unlatch.

He fell asleep in his expansive bed that night thinking of rings and necklaces and earrings. The next morning was a disappointment in that he was still living the nightmare, but he did sluggishly follow the movements of what he assumed was his morning ritual: shower, brush teeth, protein shake and fruit salad, trudge downstairs and get corralled into a taxi by Ushijima.

“You’re distressed,” said Ushijima, sneaking him a glance during the drive. “You left so suddenly yesterday. Didn’t come back after your lunch break. And Sugawara didn’t tell me…”

Oikawa looked away from the window. “I saw an old friend. I still- Honestly, Ushijima, I’m not joking. I can’t remember so much of my life.”

Ushijima studied him at length and then shrugged. “I suppose the duty falls upon me to help you remember.”

“Will you?”

“Yes,” he stated. “But you will have to be cooperative on our project.”

Oikawa had forgotten all about that mess in the chaos of yesterday. “Yes, I understand.”  

“How long have we known each other?” ventured Oikawa first, in the elevator. “In a friendly way?”

“About twelve years.”

“How did we become friends?”

“We were on the same team, and our coach made us perform get-along exercises until you’d stop serving into the back of my head and I’d stop spiking for your chest.”

“Is that it?”

“It helped that we were both going through different things. Growing processes. We were more mature than we were in high school, and we both possessed one-track mindedness about succeeding in our sport. We respected that about each other. You eventually decided I was… what was your phrasing? ‘Alright, even if you have a stick up your ass.’ That’s what you said to me after we won our first game together.”

Oikawa supposed he could see himself becoming used to Ushijima. He wasn’t best friend material in the way other people were, but he was steady, and not entirely without his merits. There were different versions of fun he could find with Ushijima.

“So all that stuff about barren soil and insignificant pride…”

Ushijima coughed, and turned faintly pink. “Why… it’s been nearly a decade since I thought of that last. I highly doubt you gave it any mind either, after college began. That wasn’t a proud moment for me, ironically. I was just a teenager with big ideas.”

“Hm.” Oikawa still occasionally turned the words over in his head on particularly sleepless nights, and the idea that it all but dust now sounded… agreeable. Oikawa followed Ushijima into his office. “And what was college like? Did people like me? Did we go to ragers? What’s the craziest thing we did?”

Ushijima clucked his tongue and ran a finger down a line of magazines on his bookshelf, selectively withdrawing a certain few. “College. We had vastly different experiences, given our… Hm. Opposing dispositions.”

Oikawa rolled his eyes. “Oh, really? I didn’t notice.”

“Training was very hard. You had self-destructive tendencies, but got better at handling them as time passed. People liked you, but I remember for a significant portion of our first year you were perturbed that you didn’t carry the same social weight you did in high school, as there weren’t as many adolescent girls around. It was actually fairly amusing. The team made fun of you about that for a while after.”

Ushijima laid out the magazines on his table and began rifling through them. “Besides lacking a literal fan club, however, you were still well liked. You had some skirmishes with teammates, and perhaps not everyone worshipped you, but still athletic and otherwise gregarious enough for any college environment.”

“And the parties?”

Ushijima pursed his mouth at this, giving Oikawa a brief, unhappy look. “We were college-faring, and that was all well and good, but I cannot help but look back at our days of decadence with some amount of disgust. The sheer amount of alcohol we consumed on a weekly basis…”

Oikawa laughed softly. “A lot, I take it.”

“We were banned from having alcohol for a number of reasons, most relevantly the empty calories it offers to a training athlete, and you never really saw the benefit in that. You went to too many parties, and weekends for you started on Thursday nights. I saw you throw up in six different places in the span of a month, once.”

“Really? What were the eight places?”

“The hall kitchen, underneath the sink; the second-floor upperclassmen dorm lounge; the physics common room; your girlfriend’s room, once and then a dry heave later; the tennis courts; and… oh, yes, on the roof of the music building,” Ushijima cited off. “That’s what I had to tell the administrative board when you were getting reviewed. You only got a week’s probation from team practice, which was a complete joke. You’re lucky you didn’t get actual poisoning in that timeline.”

“I’ll take your word on that.” Oikawa walked over and began to scan the pages Ushijima had left open in each selected issue.

“I’m trying to find our best-selling issues of the past five years,” Ushijima said without looking up. “To review the cover stories we published, and attempt to categorize what made the story appealing to our demographic.”

Oikawa took a moment to read the pages themselves- still glossy and thin, as he remembered them from a few days (or decades) ago- and tried to wrap his head around world athletes he had yet to hear of. The text was largely comprehensible, though jargon here and there stuck out, reminding him how out of comfort he felt in this new body, confronted by new faces.

“How are my family?” he asked. “And… do you know anything about Iwaizumi?”

Ushijima glanced up at him, and his face was unclear, shaped distantly. “Well… yes,” he admitted, wryly. “Although, I am not certain if it would benefit you to know about the latter, if you’re not lying about your amnesia.”

“I’d like to know about my own life, thanks,” Oikawa snapped. “Since I’m going to be living it and all.”

Ushijima shrugged. “As you wish,” he said, and went back to thumbing through his magazines. “Your family is fine, and they still live in your childhood home, last I visited. Your parents accept you, and you see your sister about once a week, with your nephew—Takeru? He’s about to graduate university himself. And the sister’s been taking a sabbatical starting last week.”

“My parents accept me? For what?”

Ushijima donned about the same expression Iwaizumi had worn earlier: one of realization, and subsequent great stress. He rubbed the base of his palm into his brow ridge. “Oh. Well, that explains some things, about yesterday morning.”

“Oh,” said Oikawa. “No, never mind. I understand.”

“You do?”

Well, he didn’t, not really, not even a little bit. “A little,” he hazarded. “Iwaizumi told me…”

Ushijima started at this. “You saw Iwaizumi-san?”

“Yes- listen, I didn’t know where I was, I assumed that my relationship with him was intact, and I was very recently relieved of this misconception, by him. Which is entirely unpleasant as a conversation, and I don’t recommend trying it.”

There was silence in response to this. Ushijima sighed and walked over, placing a heavy, although surprisingly gentle, hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Oikawa. That… could not have been easy, for you.”

He looked expectantly at Oikawa, and Oikawa found himself leaning into Ushijima’s embrace against his own will. He was sad, but not going-to-Ushijima-for-consolation sad.

“It’s not that bad,” he attempted to say, but it came out closer to a warble. Ushijima patted his back. “No, really, I’m not even that sad, I don’t know why my voice-”

“He was your best friend,” said Ushijima firmly. “…It was not easy for you the first time either, considering your last interaction with him. I don’t imagine it would be easier the second time, especially if you don’t remember how things went.”

Oikawa drew away, and found to his embarrassment that there was a very small patch of dampness on Ushijima’s shirt. “Oh, gross,” he said. “I’m sorry. Everything’s been overwhelming.”

“It’s alright. As you say… what are friends for? Now, our project might be a little set back, but I’m willing to take on your part of the work, as long as you can pitch in. We can discuss the details of your past as we work. Does that sound acceptable?”

Oikawa nodded, and set to getting back his memory.

***

The next few hours consisted largely of helping Ushijima by taking notes, cutting and rearranging photos and articles, and asking Sugawara to call various photographers and publications. Reading the older articles gave Oikawa a glean of some of the events of the past, as they mentioned tangentially other things, like political climates or newer gadgets. Reading the handful of articles about himself were also surreal. He would never object to being called “a real powerhouse” or “a nationwide standard for setters”, but it was about someone he didn’t know. One particularly well-written article described him as “an athlete worthy of great respect, with tenacity rarely found in those except for the most driven of people.” It was authored by a certain Mastuwaka, which made Oikawa’s chest feel tight again.

During this time period Ushijima clarified a number of questions for him: how he met Takemoto (he was a famous baseball player, they met about a year ago, and decided dating despite relative disinterest in each other’s personality), his favorite pastimes (eating at expensive restaurants, working late on editorial decisions, making weirdly involved Pinterest boards, vacationing, and on good weekends, practicing volleyball), and his sexual exploits (in such upsetting detail that it caused Oikawa to question Ushijima’s level of involvement in his life while rendering him unable to look into many of his coworker’s eyes). Ushijima could not help explain very much about his relationships with people from before university, which Oikawa knew for most people in their thirties were relics of ancient history. Still, it was fair to feel a bit highstrung about such things, considering he had no closure at all on that chapter of his life.

“You two are perfectly polite with one another,” insisted Ushijima. “I see no issue with your relationship.”

“It used to be different,” said Oikawa. “Mattsun didn’t even say hello. He used to come to my house and watch porn on my dad’s computer in our first year of high school because his parents put Net Nanny on his laptop. He didn’t know how to erase browsing history, so I had to do it for him, and I read the title of every weird niche kink video he watched. We were close.”

Ushijima regarded him with open distaste. “Your metric for being ‘close’ is incredibly bizarre.”

“Still. That’s history. Performing fake blood rituals to scare Makki at 3 AM the night before New Year’s is history. I wouldn’t spray just any sleeping person’s hand with whipped cream in the middle of class. I wouldn’t let just anyone shave my eyebrows off when I’m sleeping. Well- actually, that wasn’t done with my express permission. But my point still stands. Don’t even get me started on Iwaizumi. I saw that boy’s bones after he broke his arm when we were eleven. He lied to my parents for me when I went on my first date with my first girlfriend. He…!”

Oikawa trailed off, realizing that the entire thing depressed him. Surely there was a way to get back in Iwaizumi’s good graces. And the whole…

“And now he’s gay,” Oikawa grumbled. “Which you would think he would have told me earlier.”

Ushijima swept the hair falling into his brow back and read through his files. “Did you give him any reason to believe you’d be a sympathetic audience?”

Oikawa gawked. “Of course- I mean, why wouldn’t he just know I wouldn’t stop being his friend over a little thing like that-”

“Except that it isn’t a little thing. It is something that he uses to identify himself, to at least some degree.”

“Sure, but it isn’t something I care about-”

“Isn’t it, though? He’s your friend. Shouldn’t you care?”

Oikawa chewed on the inside of his mouth. “I mean that I don’t hate it.”

“That’s not entirely passionate enough to convince Iwaizumi-san that you’d provide sufficient support.”

“What does it matter, though? I’m bi or something now, too.”

Ushijima shrugged. “You weren’t aware of that back then, did you?  It’s a matter of principle. I knew of your type in high school. You were a popular, good-looking athlete who often flirted with any passing teenage girl. Even if you weren’t openly antagonistic, that archetype doesn’t normally prelude gay acceptance. I know within my high school locker room crude jokes were made. Trivializing it, sometimes even through games of chicken. Now, it does well to consider that perhaps part of it involved repressed teenage boys finding an outlet for their sexuality. But plenty of the boys were straight, and found the entire affair amusing or disgusting. Doesn’t that sound like an unideal environment to come out in?”

Oikawa had nothing to say to this, though he did absently wonder if Ushijima would draft these lengthy speeches in his head beforehand or if it were all improvised. He also had a vivid recollection of his behavior at the fire pit at his party. “Oh.”

He had outted Iwaizumi. Or, made a joke about it, not realizing that everyone but him already knew. This led to a whole new slew of questions- when had he told the others? And how had Oikawa not heard? And was that what Iwaizumi was trying to tell him from outside his window?

“There’s also the fact that Iwaizumi indubitably liked you in this time period.”

Oikawa started choking on air. “What?! Why would he- that isn’t-”

“You just went on your whole tirade regarding history, right? You were his closest friend, and he was afraid to come out to you until it was absolutely critical. And then later when you saw him at that club…”

“What club?” gritted out Oikawa. “What are you even talking about?”

Ushijima glanced at him thoughtfully. “Maybe that will be too much for you right now.”

“You can’t just drop that and then not-!”

“Make it your next conversation with Iwaizumi-san, then.”

“Next? I’m not talking to him again!”

Ushijima donned his jacket to leave. “Aren’t you?”

***

Matsukawa was having a strange week. His morning tea had been replaced by yellow label, instead of his green; he kept getting texts from someone claiming to be a past mistress (a contact of his number’s old user, he assumed); and he had aching pain in his elbows that he desperately hoped weren’t the early stages of arthritis. Oikawa speaking to him at the conference room yesterday was a brief and odd deviation from his usual day, but not so much so that he cared- sometimes Oikawa nodded at him coolly in the coffee room when it was just the two of them, and on a lucky day he got a “Good morning” as Oikawa walked past his desk.

Granted, Oikawa looked more harangued than usual that morning; he was in a jersey, for some reason, and his hair hadn’t been styled, and he had this evasive, panicked look about him. Perhaps he was hungover.

Matsukawa had no strong feelings about Oikawa one way or another, anymore. Things had changed, so on and so forth. Right. Well. Everyone from high school had changed, but that no one else had done it quite as drastically and with as little grace as Oikawa. He didn’t pretend to know what was going on inside Oikawa, or the forces that had shaped him for the eight years they had not seen each other before Matsukawa was hired to Number. The man could be anyone by now.

“And Oikawa was acting weird yesterday,” he mentioned casually to Iwaizumi over his sandwich. He spent his Wednesday lunches meeting up with him at a café halfway between their two workplaces. “I know you don’t like to hear about him that much, but I’m just saying, it’s another weird thing that happened. He called me Mattsun.”

Iwaizumi grunted noncommittally, bringing out his phone and fiddling with the screen.

“Come on,” groaned Matsukawa. “Even you have to find that bizarre. Acting like we’re high-schoolers again. Isn’t that weird?”

Iwaizumi shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just a name. Maybe it slipped out.”

“Now there’s an original thought. Maybe Nicekawa has been hiding underneath the surface the entire time.” He laughed, but trailed off as he realized that the idea made him a little gloomy. “Ergh. Do you ever miss him?”

“I don’t know,” said Iwaizumi again. He was definitely hiding something. “Maybe, sure.”

“Come on, he was your childhood best friend, wasn’t he? Makki and I didn’t have those precious shared moments from junior high with you guys. You just can’t know someone unless you knew them when they had braces and thought trading cards were cool.”

Iwaizumi snorted. “Fine. Sometimes I miss him.” He wiped his hands on a napkin and tossed it into his plate, leaning back. “He… he visited me, yesterday, actually.”

Matsukawa began choking immediately on his coke. He hacked for a bit, and then, “You can’t just not mention that, Iwaizumi. Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?”

“He said he doesn’t remember his life after our grad party. That he needs me to help him remember.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

Iwaizumi looked lost in his own thoughts. “Do you think he’s just trying to fuck with me? I don’t know, as some sick prank or something? He was acting bizarrely well for his role. Like, he really seemed like himself from high-school. He called me Iwa-chan and everything.”

Matsukawa couldn’t help but laugh, again, thinking of it; he could remember Oikawa’s exact whiny nasal lilt when he used to say that in school, draping himself languidly over Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “What else happened?”

“I told him we weren’t friends, and he had some sort of panic attack. He said my beard looks ugly. He didn’t know he was bi. Or that I was gay. His apartment is really fancy, too.”

“Holy shit,” said Matsukawa. “He didn’t know? And he said the last thing he remembers is your grad party? With that fight… that was the night you came out to him, right?”

Iwaizumi rolled his index finger on the cap of his beer. “Yup.”

“And he doesn’t remember what happened in Tokyo?”

“Nope.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

Iwaizumi laughed humorlessly. “Why would I do that? That would be twisted. He doesn’t even believe that he likes men, he isn’t going to love the idea that he… whatever. I don’t know if he’s telling the truth. Maybe you should check it out.”

“Me?” said Matsukawa. “Are you kidding me? I’m not interested in reliving any of my past with him either. The man’s my technical superior. Say he gains his memory back when I’m explaining to him how much of a dick he became. Suddenly he’d have his life back, and I’d be out of a job. I think I’ll play it safe, thanks.”

“Coward,” Iwaizumi said. “Though I’d like to see Oikawa fire you. That would be funny.”

“Don’t jinx it,” scowled Matsukawa, internally resolving to at least try to speak to Oikawa about it. From what he had seen earlier today, he had been shadowing Ushiijma quite closely, assumedly working on their new project. Maybe he’d catch him in his office without Ushijima; he liked the man well enough, but he was intimidating just standing around, to say nothing of when he was feeling protective. He decided before the office day ended seemed fine enough.

***

Work ended formally by around five in the afternoon, but most of the workaholics hung back until six. Matsukawa was assuredly not a masochist, however, and would slip out of his cubicle as soon as it was permissible. He knew Oikawa to stay in as late as midnight before- a tendency he had retained since their earlier years- and so he figured that he would wait another thirty minutes for most people to trickle out, and then serendipitously have a run-in with him.

In the meantime, he dawdled outside Oikawa’s office, where Sugawara dutifully arranged Oikawa’s schedules and calls, as well as wrote a romance novel that pretty much everyone in the office knew about. Oikawa also knew of it, and had only not shut it down yet on the admission that “It wasn’t half bad.” Little things that showed he wasn’t totally devoid of sympathy. That, or he was hoping to see if the narrative arc would reflect his and Sugawara’s very brief, very tumultuous, fling from a few years back. Which the whole office also knew about, uncomfortably.

“Matsukawa-san… Can I help you?” said Sugawara, walking over to his desk.

“No, just waiting for a moment to talk to Oikawa-san about something business-related.”

“What would that be? I haven’t gotten him scheduled for anything right now. He’s spent most of his day with Ushijima-san, anyways.”

“Yes… well.” Matsukawa coughed. “Honestly, I just need to have a private word with him. Got an insider tip that something’s up, and I might be able to help with it.”

“Oh. Alright.”

Some awkward silence befell them, before Sugawara looked pensive and said, “You know, he was acting really strange yesterday. Today too. Is it out of place for me to ask if Iwaizumi-san is involved?”

“And how would you know that?”

“He asked me to get Iwaizumi-san’s contact details yesterday before the briefing. And he was surprisingly lax about his complaints, otherwise.”

Matsukawa considered this. So Oikawa wasn’t just saving this out of character treatment for Iwaizumi. “Interesting. Iwaizumi told me that he showed up to his flat yesterday, and wasn’t like himself. I’m acting on Iwaizumi’s behalf.”

Sugawara nodded and set back to his “notes.” A short time after Oikawa re-appeared down the hall, lost in distraught conversation with Ushijima, gesticulating sharply, before breaking off and walking towards his office. He froze when making eye contact with Matsukawa, hesitantly grinning, and smiling wider when Matsukawa politely smiled back.

“Matsukawa-san.”

“Oikawa-san,” responded Matsukawa, giving a perfunctory bow. “I was wondering if I could speak to you in your office about some work.”

Oikawa looked panicked. “I’m not sure if I’m in the best state- right now, to go over work-related matters-”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Just a few questions.”

“I suppose…”

He followed Oikawa into his spacious office, lingering by the chair. He had no interest in making the conversation too long.

“So,” said Oikawa, laughing uneasily. “You want me to…?”

“I heard that you visited Iwaizumi-san yesterday.”

Oikawa’s face twisted into mortification. “He told you?”

“Yes.”

“And…?”

“He said you had a very interesting alibi as to why you were ruining a perfectly good estrangement.”

Oikawa shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He seemed to be thinking the same thing Matsukawa was thinking himself in the discomfort of the room: Clearly Iwaizumi was not the only once he’d estranged himself from. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

“I probably wouldn’t,” admitted Matsukawa. “I’m not one for believing in TV drama tropes happen in real life. I came here to figure out if you’re playing a game. Iwaizumi… was never good at handling you. If this is a sick joke, I promise you, it’s not going to be funny for him.”

“It’s not. If it helps, I can tell you the last words I remember you saying before all of this.”

“Go ahead.” His curiosity was somewhat piqued.

“You said, happy birthday, I ate all your leftovers. Also, something about how I need to stop being a dick.”

Matsukawa restrained a smile, as this was accurate to his behavior as a teenager. “That does sound like me.”

“You were very rude, you know,” scoffed Oikawa, relaxing for a moment. “You always eat all the food at parties, and never throw your own parties. It’s downright unfair, exploiting others. And Makki isn’t any better. I didn’t even get to see your presents, to see if they… made up for…” he trailed off, remembering himself. “Or, I guess I did see them, but I don’t remember if they were any good.”

“I got you one of those fake Team Japan jerseys,” Matsukawa offered. “Which was prophetic of me.”

“Oh,” said Oikawa. “I guess that’s good enough.” A pause. “I know you probably still don’t believe me, but how is everyone?”

If he was faking memory loss, he was doing it with gusto. “Iwaizumi finished his residency a little while ago. He’s doing well for himself, really well, but he’s always busy. We don’t get to see him half as much as we can. He was pretty fucked up after everything with you went down, but that was years and years ago. I’m obviously here, which is fine. Not really what I want to do in the long-term, but it pays bills. Hanamaki works for a tech start-up, in Sendai. We see them once every few months. Oh, and they go by they, them..”

Oikawa had many questions, but ignored them at present. “And me?”

“What about you?”

“How have I been?” Oikawa smiled weakly. “I don’t actually know. Ushijima can only tell me so much.”

“If I’m being brutally honest- like, I-can-get-fired-from-this honest, you’re a huge pain in the ass. You’re very, very good at your job, though. You seem to have a bustling social life, and becoming a Gold-medal Olympian doesn’t hurt your reputation.”

“And my friends…?”

Matsukawa shrugged. “I don’t really know. You only really hang out with Ushijima here, at least.”

“It’s difficult for me to understand how Iwaizumi and I aren’t together anymore. Er- as friends.”

“I can’t believe it either, sometimes.” Matsukawa had meant it earlier, when he had said that Iwaizumi and Oikawa were of a different cut; although the four of them all hung out in their youth, Matsukawa knew little- and wanted to continue knowing little- about their relationship in private. When the group split after an excursion it wasn’t in fourways, but rather Oikawa and Iwaizumi parting off as one unit. There were no harbored feelings of jealousy, as Matsukawa and Hanamaki were close enough as well, but they weren’t tidally locked in the way Oikawa and Iwaizumi were.

“I guess I’m wondering if you’re going to screw with Iwaizumi’s head over this thing,” Matsukawa said.

“I still have questions for him. Or I’ve been told as such. So yes.”

Matsukawa considered him at length, and tried to let optimism get the best of him. “Say you are real about this, and you do want to make some sort of amends.”

“I want to.”

“Then you should invite him to the gala tomorrow night. It’ll be a meet up with all the other sports magazine people, and you can both get some closure. Makki’s coming too, if you want to see him now.” Matsukawa didn’t mention that he had already invited Iwaizumi; but he figured Iwaizumi receiving contact from Oikawa would set the tone for the night.

Oikawa tilted his head. “I… yes. I’ll do that. Thank you, Matsukawa-san.”

Matsukawa hummed at this and took his leave, briefly texting Hanamaki and Iwaizumi that Oikawa would be making an appearance tomorrow as he walked outside, into a light shower. This would be interesting. Perhaps Oikawa would surprise them. The harried buzzing of his phone from deep within his trench pocket- ostensibly a very frazzled and bewildered Iwaizumi- told him he would likely surprise some more than others.

Chapter Text

Oikawa: hey, it’s me, Oikawa. I was wondering if you were free tomorrow night?
Iwaizumi: Hey. Is this about the gala? Matsukawa mentioned it to me.
Oikawa: haha, yes. I was wondering if you wanted to go to it with me. I still have some questions for you and I promise I wont be annoying!! im sorry about last time, I wasn’t sure what to say
Iwaizumi: Sure, I’ll come
Oikawa: curt as always lol (￣▽￣)ノ
Iwaizumi: Wow… you really aren’t kidding huh? Those emoticons are super outdated
Oikawa: WHAT
Oikawa: NO
Oikawa: they don’t have them in the future?!
Iwaizumi: No, they died out a while ago. Lol
Oikawa: ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚
Iwaizumi: …
Iwaizumi: Out of curiosity what do you want to know about?
Oikawa: if I ask you now what’s the point of going to the gala!!
Iwaizumi: Free food?
Oikawa: pulling a mattsun i see
Iwaizumi: Speaking of him, did you two speak today?
Oikawa: yes, why? did you send him?
Iwaizumi: Sort of. I need to go to bed now, see you tomorrow- I’ll catch a ride with Mattsun to the event
Oikawa: ok goodnight iwa-chan!! ☆⌒(ゝ。∂)
Oikawa: *Iwaizumi..
Iwaizumi: gn

The entire exchange had taken a little less than five minutes, and Oikawa found himself desperate to extend the conversation further; the familiarity that talking to a curt Iwaizumi granted him was addictive, even if the pit of it sizzled with an aimless guilt. He knew pushing Iwaizumi anymore would likely strain the conversation and set the phone down soundly on its face.

He was in the midst of staring productively at his ceiling when the knocking began. He barely had time to startle before he heard the door open and, to his dismay, “Tooru-chan!” rang out.

The man. Takemoto. Protein shake, kissing-sweet-bottoms man.

“Hello,” said Oikawa feebly when Takemoto and he bumped into one another in the doorway. At second glance, he wasn’t half as menacing as Oikawa had remembered him to be. Perhaps this was because he was dressed this time, in a gray sweater and navy windbreaker. There was a bit of color high on his cheeks, and the top of his head was slicked with the misty drizzle from outside. He looked perfectly normal. Handsome, if you were into that sort of thing. Which Oikawa knew he theoretically was.

“Hello, you,” he repeated back coyly, his palm somehow already cupping Oikawa’s jaw. At this development Oikawa felt his stomach drop, although not unalike to the anxiety that prefaced his first kiss in junior high, which was absurd, because that meant there was something to look forward to. But Takemoto simply pecked him over his half-open mouth, with little pressure or demand, and then shuffled past Oikawa to do something in the room.

It hadn’t felt awful, Oikawa decided as turned to follow him. It had felt warm. He was definitely blushing, from being acutely flustered, but kissing men was not a trial he had to worry about.

“How was your trip?” Oikawa ventured.

“Fine, fine. Didn’t sleep much. Akiyama was a pain, as usual. How’ve you been? Didn’t really text me, huh… should I be worried?” He laughed, here, at his own joke. “Want to go out tonight?”

Maybe this would be a chance to see more of the city. “Sure. And my two days were, er, okay. I think. Well, to be honest, it’s been a very weird few days.”

“Oh?” said Takemoto distractedly. He was on his phone. “I’m sure it’ll blow over. Wanna do the izakaya five blocks away?”

“…Alright.”

Studying Takemoto until they walked into the izakaya revealed several key facts: that Takemoto was well-meaning, and polite at all the right places (occasionally charming or raunchy), but habitually preoccupied with one thing or another. He didn’t seem to even notice if Oikawa was behaving unlike his former self. If he were any less flirty, Oikawa would have tagged him as distant. He also seemed to care about his work a great deal.

At the izakaya he looked nervous under the full force of Oikawa’s attention, noting that Oikawa appeared “strangely focused” during their second (or third?) drink.

“Oh?” said Oikawa. “And how am I usually?”

“You and I both know you love your job at work, at home, and during drinks. Which I admire, obviously. It’s something we have in common. It’s a little weird to see you without one eye glued to your phone at all times.”

“What else do we have in common?”

Takemoto grinned. “Sports. Being unbearably good-looking. Similar tastes in food, décor, among other things…” He waggled his eyebrows and touched Oikawa’s knee underneath the table, and Oikawa jumped only a bit.

“You’re not terrible,” Oikawa decided aloud. He was only a little bit of an ass, but not evil.

“Yeah, you’re not so bad yourself,” Takemoto said, going back to his phone. “It’s hard to keep you all to myself.” He chuckled again, to himself. “Well, anyways. What have you been up to? Any new things happening at work?”

“They’re making us redesign,” offered Oikawa. “My boss had a meeting about it a few days ago, I’m working with Ushiwaka-chan on it, I think.”

“Kuroo-san is making you redesign?” Takemoto raised his eyebrows, clicked his tongue. “Tch. That’s a death sentence for most magazines. I’m sure you and Ushijima-san can handle it, though. Speaking of which, however, Ushiwaka-chan? That’s new… Or maybe it isn’t.” He looked upwards, considering. “Did you used to call each other that when you guys were dating?”

Oikawa tried his very best to not perform a spit-take at the name Kuroo (so that’s why he looked familiar), but failed upon hearing the last question. It didn’t help that he wasn’t enjoying the newfound taste of beer. “We dated?”

Takemoto shrugged, the wrinkles of his jacket bunching up around his shoulders. “I don’t know. I always suspected.”

“So- you’re saying you don’t know for sure, then.”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, then it isn’t true.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re acting a little suspicious,” Oikawa said tentatively. “I don’t think we dated.”

Takemoto rolled his eyes. “Think? How come you don’t know? It doesn’t even matter, it’s in the past. I was just wondering. You two spend a lot of time together.”

Oikawa wasn’t sure if Takemoto was always this jealous, or if it was a product of his own uncharacteristic behavior. “We didn’t. And he’s my co-worker and closest apparent friend, of course we’ll be around each other.”

Takemoto shrugged again, nonchalantly. “A guy wonders. You were quick to run into his arms the morning I had to leave.”

“Well, okay.” His exit on his first day as a thirty-year-old didn’t help his record. “I don’t… Whatever. Kuroo-san, huh.”

“Yeah, the guy you played in high school, I heard all of that.” So it was that Kuroo. “Nice dude. Goes hard at our parties. Cute small flan-hair partner.”

“Hm. Is there anyone else from my high-school days at work?”

Takemoto took a long swig from his bottle of beer and pouted. “Is this the part where you make me recount your life story back to you in third person to make you feel better about yourself?”

“I do that?”

“On occasion. And yeah. Matsukawa, right?”

“What do I get out of that?” Oikawa marvels. “And- yes. Matsukawa. He’s there. And Sugawara…”

“See, now that’s weird. If by that you mean Refreshing-kun, then yes, he is your long-suffering secretary you once ravished. I can’t tell you much about Matsukawa considering you refuse to speak about him. Though he wrote flattering articles about you. Is this another man you’re having relations with?” Cursory laugh.

“No,” insisted Oikawa. And then, something he never expected to be a string of words that would exist. “Am I cheating on you?”

Takemoto looked cowed and shifty, but not distinctly upset. He took a sip of his beer. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” said Oikawa. “Are you cheating on me?”

There was a beat of silence, and then another. “No?” said Takemoto, as if chewing over the thought in his head. “Exclusivity isn’t something we explicitly discussed.”

“So you are, then.” Oikawa wasn’t deeply cut by this, but felt a little pathetic about the state of his life. Maybe if he was the him he was supposed to be, he would feel enraged, but he suspected by Takemoto’s near-blasé attitude that this was probably something lingering under the surface, that had remained unsaid for a while. And the resigned expression he wore didn’t anticipate a break-up, but rather a sweeping of things under the rug.

Takemoto leaned his head against his hand, and drank some more. “For the record- and I’m not sure why you’re playing a clueless act right now- I’m pretty certain you’re cheating on me too. With people from work. I just can’t figure out who.”

“I’m pretty sure this is not okay,” said Oikawa. “…Look, I’ve been feeling weird lately.”

“About us? About cheating?”

“About everything. I feel like I’m forgetting my entire life.”

“You’re too young for a mid-life crisis.”

“I’m serious. I have a lot on my plate now, more than you’d ever think of.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “So let’s book another trip to Antigua.”

“No, not I’m-stressed-from-work issues, like, I-don’t-know-who-I-am issues. I don’t think it’s fair to either of us to stay together if we’re both obviously not ready for something long-term.”

Takemoto grimaced. “You’re making me sad. I hate when you’re serious.”

“Relationships aren’t all fun and games!”

“We are, though,” said Takemoto. “That’s sort of our thing. Being fun. That’s why everyone’s jealous of our relationship. We have all the sex drive and none of the icky conversations. A record you’re smearing now, by the way.” His gaze slipped away, towards the rest of the dimly-lit izakaya. “I’m bored.”

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I honestly don’t know either.”

“So can we go on a break?”

“Only if Antigua is still on.”

Oikawa rolled his eyes, and scoffed to himself.  Takemoto had some sort of chronic avoidance problem. He himself could only try on the gloves of responsibility ever so often. He got up. “I’m going to go home now. You should probably stay at your place for a while.”

“So no sex tonight, I gather.”

“You gathered correctly,” Oikawa said through acute embarrassment, for himself and Takemoto and also the thought of sexual intimacy with a man. “Goodbye. Pick up your stuff tomorrow morning.”

Having destroyed his apparently long-term relationship with his boyfriend, Oikawa felt rather on a roll as he left the izakaya. Perhaps estrangement was just his thing; a natural skill. He was tumbling mentally through the meditative weight of this thought when he tumbled literally into a man walking along the sidewalk as well.

“I’m sorry,” he began, and then quickly stopped, because- while he didn’t recognize the taller man, the one he fell into- the man beside him was decidedly Iwaizumi, burly as ever. “Ah…”

“Oikawa,” said Iwaizumi hoarsely, though with surprise. His eyebrows drew up. “You’re here?”

What was that supposed to mean? Here, as in, here on the wet street, or here in front of Iwaizumi, or here in the universe? Oikawa began to suspect he too was a little drunk.

“Iwaizumi,” he said, finally, finding his voice. “Yes. Fancy bumping into you here. Two times a week! Must be a record. I was just on my way out…” He was blabbering.

Iwaizumi nodded awkwardly, and jerked his head towards the man next to him. He was taller than Iwaizumi, of average build, and dressed nicely, but Oikawa could not manage to note anything distinct about his face; every time he tried to look the features seemed to slip off him, as if was forgetting his face while looking at him, which was an entirely dull experience that further compelled Oikawa to stare at Iwaizumi’s intense features instead.

“This is my boyfriend, Kondo,” said Iwaizumi. Oikawa could feel his face twitch, but wasn’t sure which way. He hoped it wasn’t upsetting, and tried yet again to feel anything but ennui when faced with the boring, boring face of Kondo. Iwaizumi’s love-thing Kondo. He wanted to know Kondo’s first name; perhaps he could create some annoying nickname from it.

“Hello,” offered the man eventually, reaching forward a hand. Oikawa gingerly shook it. “Nice to meet you. Iwaizumi’s mentioned you before.”

“Good things, I hope,” Oikawa recited. Kondo’s vaguely strained smile said otherwise, and Oikawa was glad that the man lacked the personality to behave outwardly coldly towards him. “I’m actually on my way home, I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting on your date.”

“Tooru-chan!” floated out from behind Oikawa, and suddenly an arm was draped around his shoulders; Oikawa hoped he could blame the oncoming blush on the chill of the post-rain outdoors. “I told you to wait up for me to pay the bill! So impatient!” Takemoto laughed (too close to his ear) and turned to Iwaizumi and Kondo, extending a hand forward as well. “Takemoto. Oikawa’s boyfriend. And you two are…?”

“Iwaizumi and his boyfriend Kondo,” said Oikawa, gesturing at each, praying that Takemoto would not make a fool of him. “They just happened to be walking by.”

“Iwaizumi? As in the Iwa-chan? My, what a pleasant surprise. The universe has mysterious things in store for all of us, though, so perhaps not a surprise.”

Kondo’s face had soured somewhat at Iwa-chan, and Iwaizumi also looked a healthy shade of embarrassed. “Yes,” he eventually said. “Nice to meet you, Takemoto.”

“What do you do, Kondo? I feel like I’ve heard that name before.”

“It’s a common name… I write for an editorial.”

“Don’t tell me you write for Tokyo Times.”

Kondo coughed in surprise. “Oh. Well that is me, actually.”

“Your piece on religion in the Meiji Restoration was phenomenal. Insightful stuff. I mean, everything mainstream I had read before had been like, the genro are apostles this, the emperor was Jesus that, totally disregarding of the whole- well. That’s what you get when Westerners get too excited about the history here.”

Kondo’s eyes were wide. “Thanks- thanks a lot, actually. I didn’t think anyone got a kick out of that one. I hadn’t seen that many papers on the Buddhist-Confucian aspect, instead of the Christian or Shintoism approach- sorry, I’m getting carried away. What do you do?”

Takemoto pouted. “Now, see, this is the part I have to admit that I’m just a dumb baseball player. I’m Oikawa’s trophy boyfriend.”

Even Iwaizumi had the wherewithal to look shocked. “You’re that Takemoto?”

“That Takemoto next to that Oikawa talking to that Kondo and that Iwa-chan,” said Takemoto sagely. “We’re all men of talent and note, apparently.”

“I actually don’t know who you are,” admitted Kondo. “I don’t qualify as athletic enough. Or athletic at all. But I’m always flattered to have a fan.”

“In the interest of letting Iwaizumi and his… Kondo having a good time, I think we should leave them alone,” Oikawa interrupted, worried that Kondo and Takemoto would playfully flirt into the next eon. He himself was tiring of feeling the weight of Iwaizumi’s steadfast, heavy gaze the entire encounter. He grabbed Takemoto’s hand, and bowed quickly. “Pleasure to meet both of you. Iwaizumi- I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good night.”

Kondo said goodbye cheerily, and Iwaizumi nodded, still staring at Oikawa in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. They wandered further down the street while Oikawa and Takemoto walked wordlessly down the opposite direction; only when they were sufficiently out of view did Takemoto begin humming an annoying tune, throwing Oikawa little sideway glances.

“I meant what I said at the izakaya,” Oikawa reiterated.

“Oh, I know. It just makes sense now.”

“What does?”

“You’re seeing Iwaizumi, aren’t you?”

“What- I am not!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not offended. It’s easy to act like a teenager when we run into our one-true-loves, or whatever like that. No one can compete with a first heartbreak, not even me.”

“Iwaizumi wasn’t my first heartbreak-”

“See, I came out of the bar feeling a little down, because we were on a break, and you have the good TV packages anyways, so I’d miss the new episodes of Cereal Killer for the next who knows how long, when I saw you entrenched in the particular pickle that is talking to ex-love of your life, Iwaizumi-san and someone else who had to be his boyfriend, and I thought, if I was in that position without a boyfriend to lord over my ex-soulmate’s head I’d feel so depressed! So I thought that I’d help you out.”

Oikawa studied him carefully. Takemoto seemed unaffectedly pleased with himself, and Oikawa knew that- in some way- this was his way of doing a favor.

“Thank you,” said Oikawa.

Takemoto sobered for a moment. “Of course. I’m not heartless, you know.” He patted Oikawa on the back. “I’m going to catch a cab to my place, then. Could you do me a favor and tell me when you and Iwaizumi become official? That Kondo isn’t too bad of a catch.” He began to walk away, in the opposite direction. “Hope you and Iwaizumi make tender love tomorrow!”

Oikawa waved goodbye and felt grateful that Takemoto had not looked back to see Oikawa’s face burning at the thought he had left him with. He had never been mortified by sex before- or perhaps this was a lie, but he was good at not being squeamish about it- but the last few days had been full of vivid and unusual imagery. He made his way back to his apartment, wishing that things would revert to their natural state of making sense.

***

The next day, Oikawa was pleasantly surprised to learn that Ushijima was not perfect at all things as he watched him struggle for ten minutes to try and put up decorations for the gala. Watching an adult man fail very much at a basic task was something that brought him joy, he decided. Ushijima did not yell at him upon realizing he had been watching instead of assisting, but a vein emerged in his forehead, and his voice fell flat for a little while after. When asked what type of cocktail he wanted, his response was a terse, “Something that makes you less unbearable.” This was also amusing, and Oikawa found himself enjoying Ushijima’s blunt nature even more.

“You’re fun,” he said, resting his elbow on Ushijima’s shoulder. “I like Pissy-jima.”

“Please never call me that again.”

Oikawa snorted and took a sip of his own sweet cocktail, which was more acceptable than the beer of yesterday. People were beginning to enter the large room- it was a dimly-lit venue booked in some ritzy hall outside downtown Tokyo- and mingling with each other, and a DJ was clearly battling wires to set up his equipment. Oikawa kept an eye out for Iwaizumi. As time passed in this body, and it became more apparent that his current situation was unlikely to change, he grew further interested in comparing the people from his past to their iteration at present. He had the fairly unique opportunity to re-meet people; he figured he could take advantage of it until his memory came back.

“Do you need anything else, sir?” asked Sugawara, sidling up next to Oikawa in a white button up and slacks.

…Except Sugawara, who had been rendered a harbinger of inept, flustered behavior from Oikawa since Ushijima’s alarmingly in-depth recounting of his sexual relations of the last few years. He had avoided eye contact successfully for the last twenty-four hours.

“No, Sugawara-san,” said Oikawa stiffly. “You can- I think for the time-being, you shouldn’t worry about anything, and go enjoy yourself.”

“Are you alright? I don’t mean to question your authority, but in all honesty, you’ve been behaving consistently off since Monday.” He placed a concerned hand on Oikawa’s arm; Oikawa yelped, and then tried to pass it as a laugh, which did not help the sudden onset of sweating he was undergoing.

“I’m fine, Sugawara-san,” Oikawa insisted, smiling, and making the mistake of looking Sugawara in the eyes, which were big and brown and framed by curly lashes and punctuated by that mole, and his mouth that was open in confusion, that had been on his-

“You’re turning red,” Sugawara said, worried. “Is it too hot in here?”

Ushijima made a sort of half-aborted sound that Oikawa could only guess was his version of a snort. He was certainly also down and looking away, and covering his mouth with a fist. Oikawa thought about his mental jewelry box, and wondered if the song it played when opened was a funeral march. He certainly felt like he was dying. “I’m fine, Suga-san. It’s just been a difficult week, with the redesign and all.”

“Hm,” said Sugawara. “Well. If it’s alright by you, I’m going to get a drink.”

“Please, help yourself.”

He departed on that, and Ushijima faced him with a distinct air of bemusement.

“Shut up.”

“I was just noting how it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen you so flustered. It’s a refreshing change of pace.”

“Fine. Did you get it noted? Is it down in your mental notepad of ‘things I have over Oikawa’? I’m glad my suffering is benefiting someone.”

“Me too.”

“Oh, now you’re really pushing it-”

“There’s Matsukawa-san,” Ushijima remarked plainly, pointing him out subtly on the upper floor of the room. “I think Iwaizumi-san will be in close succession. It would be advisable to go approach him.”

Oikawa squinted at him. “You’re lucky you’re helpful.”

“I’ll await my lecture for later, then,” he said, and departed to get another drink. Oikawa went upstairs, and wondered faintly who the more long-suffering one was between the two of them.

“Oikawa-san,” said Matsukawa, waving him over. “Good to see you.”

“Mattsun… Matsukawa,” said Oikawa. “Hello.” He glanced down at Matsukawa’s outfit- though it wasn’t sweats, it looked like well-worn denim. And he was wearing sneakers. At least his hair was slicked back. “Nice… outfit.”

Matsukawa snorted. “Thanks. Where’s your plus one?”

“I thought Iwaizumi was coming with you?”

“I meant-uh, what was his name- Takemoto-san, actually.”

“He isn’t going to be joining us tonight,” said Oikawa, unsure if sharing break-ups was too personal.

“Ah,” said Matsukawa. He tilted his head. “So you’re planning on other endeavors tonight.”

This again. Did everyone in the office know every minute detail of his personal life? “I don’t take your meaning.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Matsukawa stated without venom. Next to him, over the balcony, the party bustled, and music began echoing in the corners of the room. “Iwaizumi and Hanamaki just arrived two minutes ago. They should be up here any second now.”

“That’s good to hear. I’m- excited, to see Makki again. Hanamaki.”

“Yeah, same. They’ve been very busy lately- they don’t ever show up to my work events. Sowing their wild oats and all, the bastard.”

“Oh, this sounds like an interesting discussion,” said someone, holding two martinis, stepping into the conversation. “Just up my alley.”

Matsukawa smirked and took one of the drinks. “Why, funnily enough, our discussion has indeed been about you.”

Oikawa did a double take; of all the people he had seen, Hanamaki looked the least like their former self. Their hair was buzzed close, a pastel pink, and their eyebrows were- gone. Oikawa wondered if Matsukawa had shaved them off. They were also otherwise clean-shaven, and dressed in a suit, bringing attention to their lanky frame- potentially even ganglier than they were in high school.

“And who is this- oh.” Hanamaki paused and the smile fell off their face, but they still bowed curtly, and thrust forward their hand to shake. “Ah. Hello.”

Oikawa felt the brush of metal upon shaking his hand. “Hanamaki-san… you’re…?”

“Married?” Hanamaki smiled again, and it looked genuine. “Yes. Isn’t it something? I have a wife and everything.”

“And a child on the way,” added Matsukawa.

“And a child on the way,” echoed Hanamaki. “Exactly. Makki Junior is just waiting to bust out. And, I, as their loving parent, am incredibly ready to take them to Mommy and Me swimming classes.”

“Your domestic bliss vibes are depressing,” sighed Matsukawa. “Go be happy and in a committed relationship somewhere else and leave us bachelors alone.”

“Then you should save your languishing about Aoki-san for another time. We’re at a party.”

Oikawa had a hard time digesting a parental Hanamaki. The picture of Hanamaki he had eternally imprinted in his mind was one where they were drowning in chip crumbs and drooling in their sleep, a black mustache sharpied on, one hand in a bag of chips, the other jammed in his shorts somewhere in the vicinity of their nether regions. Oikawa had many pictures of this, and occasionally made one into his phone’s lock screen. Served them right for trying to jack off during a sleepover (Hanamaki insisted they had simply been itching something).

“Wow,” he said. “Congratulations. That’s- amazing.”

“Well, what’s up with you, then?” Hanamaki asked, picking up a shrimp from a passing waiter’s platter. They popped it into their mouth. “Besides the whole Olympics thing, I know about that. Obviously.”

“This is actually quite interesting,” said Matsukawa. “Oikawa-san claims he cannot recall a day in his life after his eighteenth birthday. Or, was it the grad party? I think it’s the second one.”

“Oh, that’s fun,” said Hanamaki. They blinked owlishly. “I was worried this night would be boring.”

Unsure what to say, Oikawa did a number on the shrimp platter himself (the waiter’s expression hovered between concerned and impressed) and then said, through a full mouth, “Aoki-san?”

“Oh, don’t let him start,” said Hanamaki, rolling his eyes. “They aren’t even really broken up…”

“Says you,” said Matsukawa, leaning against the banister. He sounded distinctly glum. “No one understands the pain of an on-again off-again relationship unless they’ve been through one. She’s my soulmate, and then she’s not… she’s studying Literature, and then she’s a fashion designer… we’re living together, and then I’m getting evicted! It’s painful on the heart.”

“Boo hoo, your girlfriend is an immensely successful figure in fashion and you can’t afford to live with her until you get your next promotion,” said Hanamaki. “We all know you guys are going to be an item again in six months, just like we knew after your second break-up nine years ago. If anything you two are still an item, in that pseudo-spiritual red-string way…” They plucked Matsukawa’s pinky up and wriggled it. “See, she’s beckoning to you now, tugging on her string. Or maybe she’s just drinking tea and trying to be refined? Ha…”

“She doesn’t have to try to be refined,” Matsukawa said gloomily. “She just is.”

“Is this the same Aoki- from, uh, high-school?” Oikawa asked, finally having swallowed the mass of shrimp in his mouth.

“Oh,” said Hanamaki, face lighting up. “In fact, it is. I forgot that she had a thing for you back then.”

Matsukawa scowled, and turned to Oikawa. “If you really are eighteen at heart, then I’d like eighteen-year-old Oikawa to know I blame him for my lack of romantic attention in high school. The rest of the team had absolutely no chance. We had to try and get with the girls from other schools. Yahaba even tried his hand with the Karasuno manager, the smaller one, and that was… honestly, hilarious, but that’s how desperate you made us.”

“We all thought you’d get with Aoki over summer break,” said Hanamaki cheerfully. They looked over Oikawa’s shoulder. “Or, otherwise, you’d get with-”

“Hey,” said Iwaizumi, gruffly, coming up beside him. His voice was still taking getting used to, Oikawa found, because at the proximity of it he felt nervous and warm, like his insides were a lava lamp. “I couldn’t find the bathroom. Why is this place so fancy but so fucking bad at placing bathrooms?”

He seemed to notice Oikawa then, and thumped his shoulder with a hand in greeting. “Oh. Hey.”

“Iwa-chan,” squeaked Oikawa as he stumbled under the force of Iwaizumi’s address, as if Iwaizumi had struck the words out of him. “I mean, hello. Iwaizumi. Er, san.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” said Matsukawa dryly. Hanamaki covered their mouth with their hand as if mildly affronted, but Oikawa could see the familiar way the bottom curve of their eye tightened; they were laughing at him.

“How familiar,” Hanamaki said. “So this isn’t a joke. Oikawa really does think he’s eighteen.” They regarded him thoughtfully. “I didn’t think I would miss that name you had from him. It’s a wonder no one’s really called him that since.”

“Yeah, Iwaizumi’s lovers tend to call him Ha-chan, or baby, or something disgusting like that,” agreed Matsukawa. Iwaizumi looked stricken. “I actually rather prefer Iwa-chan. It’s perfectly innocuous and ironic, yet also unironic. Melodic, even.”

Hanamaki nodded sagely. “If childhood petnames aren’t loaded with hints of tumultuous emotional relationships and intimacy issues, I don’t even want to hear it.”

“Sure, just because you’re grown-ups now and went to university means you can throw around fancy words,” Oikawa snapped. He was unhappy to hear his interpersonal problems discussed so cavalierly “Using the word unironic doesn’t make you some sort of Freudian mastermind!”

Hanamaki grinned openly at him, and leaned their head on Matsukawa’s shoulder. “Oh, can we keep him? I like him again.”

“His existence is not making me want to peel my skin off, so I think the story checks out.” Matsukawa extended a hand towards Oikawa. “Hi, Oldkawa.”

Oikawa shook his hand, and Iwaizumi sighed, looking quietly amused. Oikawa turned to face him, noting that from this angle that his nose looked marginally crooked. His hands were shoved deep into his jeans and he wore a weary look. Oikawa wondered if he had had a tiring day at work, or his tax returns were off and he had to stay on hold-lines all day, or if he had stayed up last night with his boyfriend, watching a movie.

“What’s up?” said Iwaizumi, turning to face Oikawa back. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Middle age,” said Oikawa, forgetting himself.

Iwaizumi sputtered. “What the- being thirty is nowhere near middle age-”

Matsukawa and Hanamaki crowed; Oikawa smiled at Iwaizumi, feeling the reckless confidence of being fairly in his natural environment, and placed a hand on the place where his shoulder met his neck. He leaned in conspiratorially. “I think you’re in sore need of re-meeting Oldkawa-sama, Iwaizumi-san.”

***

Ushijima was kind enough to only insert himself once into the conversation between the four of them, ostensibly to check in on Oikawa. He brought drinks- several of them, for everyone. Oikawa wasn’t yet drunk, but knew that treating his fourth glass like juice was ill-advised. And although his vision grew relaxed, he still noticed Iwaizumi staring after Ushijima as he left, and shooting a look to Matsukawa, who raised his eyebrows and ever so slightly nodded.

“So, Ushijima,” said Oikawa, trying to prompt the conversation.

Matsukawa smiled plainly. “Ushijima.”

“What was it you called him again…?” Iwaizumi tapped his fingers against his glass. As the night had proceeded he had gradually opened up, with the help of Hanamaki and Matsukawa; at least, he smiled occasionally, and scowled at Oikawa’s ribbing, and protested at being made to socialize in a larger setting. Oikawa was relieved to see him behaving at least somewhat in his old ways, even if he did a host of alien things as well: growing easily worried over any ailments others mentioned, pausing to write things down in neat script on his phone, and on one occasion allowing Hanamaki to pet his hair without flinching away and barking.

“Ushiwaka-chan,” said Oikawa, wondering whether Iwaizumi would object to his own touch. “That’s what I called him. He was such an ass, too, but- he’s actually nice in the future. Surprisingly matronly.”

Matsukawa gave Iwaizumi another knowing look. Hanamaki made an annoyed tch witnessing their silent conversation, and instead turned to Oikawa to ask for “Sordid details regarding Takemoto-san.”

Oikawa wilted. “I don’t have any. We just broke up. Well, I just broke up with him.”

“Oh?” said Iwaizumi. “But- you guys are so similar. And last night, you two were…”

“We’re not similar!”

Iwaizumi guffawed. “You two are practically the same person. Not that I know you enough to be sure, but, I’m pretty certain.”

“Yeah, you were fucking yourself,” agreed Matsukawa. He shrugged at Oikawa’s scandalized look. “What? I’ve seen him at enough of our functions to know things. He’s you. Or, was you. Is a version of you?”

“I haven’t met him, so I can’t be sure,” said Hanamaki. “Let’s run down a quick checklist. Is he needlessly suggestive?”

“Yes,” said Matsukawa and Iwaizumi.

“Is he a workaholic?”

Oikawa glanced downwards guiltily. “Sort of. I’ve been told.”

“Annoyingly good-looking?”

Matsukawa nodded, while Iwaizumi failed to respond, instead scratching the back of his head. Oikawa simpered, wrapping the crook of his elbow around Hanamaki’s neck and pulling them in. “Aw, Makki, if you were simply looking to pay Oikawa-sama a compliment, you could’ve done so anytime!”

“Oh yeah,” said Hanamaki. “I almost forgot. Does he use the third person when speaking directly to you?”

“Yes,” said Iwaizumi emphatically. Matsukawa laughed to himself, adding, “It’s actually pretty funny when you guys got lovey dovey at functions- you’d both speak in third person to each other, so it always sounded like I was being read aloud a horrible story in grade school.”

“So the verdict is in,” stated Hanamaki, turning their head towards Oikawa. Their faces were too close, and their cheek brushed against Oikawa’s nose; he could smell their cologne, and feel the soft heat of their skin. On instinct, he drew away, feeling embarrassed at the sudden intimacy of it.

“Oh,” said Hanamaki, peering down at Oikawa. “That’s the other elephant in the room, isn’t it? Oldkawa didn’t know he liked anything other than women.”

“I’m not sure if I know that right now, either,” said Oikawa.

Hanamaki shrugged. “Misgivings aside, you’re still who you are. It wasn’t a huge shock to me or the others when we found out, but sure, it was against the tone of the rest of your entire persona.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Iwaizumi laughed here, half-heartedly, and Oikawa somehow felt it in his knees. “You can’t pretend you don’t know what we mean. Your entire fan club was based on your availability as a straight man. I mean, even now, you’re having a hard time with it, aren’t you? It doesn’t seem like you. Or the old you.”

“I don’t know,” said Matsukawa. He tilted his head thoughtfully, examining Oikawa. “It was there before, and if anything, it makes him make more sense in retrospect. You were seemingly always interested in girls, and dating, but never had anything long-term. I don’t know any of your girlfriends from back them you were genuinely close to. You always said it was because volleyball required most of your attention, but we knew plenty of other captains who were dating. You were overcompensating for something.”

“I like women, though.” And he did. He didn’t feel as though he was deceiving himself on that front.

“Oh, sure, there’s no denying that. But you didn’t get with any girls you liked in high school, is all, and didn’t look at any boys either.” 

“Hold up,” said Iwaizumi. He touched the tip of his fist to Matsukawa’s shoulder. “I only liked- like- men. And I didn’t… date girls, to make up for my insecurity-”

“Vastly different personalities and situations,” interrupted Hanamaki. “Not even a question. Oikawa is bi, and didn’t know it until college began. He was also blessed, for lack of better word, by the gods of puberty, and was getting a lot of attention from girls anyways. And was volleyball captain.”

“A popular boy,” said Matsukawa.

“A popular boy,” echoed Hanamaki, smirking. “A real popular boy. And- unfortunately- it wasn’t befitting a manly-man athlete to be gay- or bi- and Oikawa repressed any subconscious urges towards the less fair sex by throwing his cards in with the ladies. It was easier for him to do that because he did harbor an attraction to women, and women clearly had an attraction to him- for whatever ungodly reason- so he banked on that for a while.”

Oikawa uneasily eyed him. “You really did take those Intro Psych classes too seriously, huh?”

“It doesn’t make it any less true,” said Hanamaki, rolling their eyes. “You would’ve gone much longer in denial if you had actually found a girl you liked in high school. Too bad you clearly were hung up over something else. Iwaizumi.”

Oikawa’s stomach dropped. “Huh?”

Hanamaki smiled. “I’m just starting on Iwaizumi’s side of it, is all. Iwaizumi’s deal was entirely different. First off- he knew he was gay, since second-year of high school. He wasn’t thronged by girls, and also had the excuse of athleticism to avoid dating, so he didn’t pursue them- which would have been a little cruel to both parties anyways, at that point.”

“Unconscionable,” agreed Matsukawa. “Iwaizumi was just more comfortable in his sexuality early on.”

“Cheers,” said Iwaizumi dryly. He had the put-upon look of a parent. “Are we done talking about my adolescent sexuality, or…?”

“We’re done,” said Oikawa, for more his sake than Iwaizumi’s.

Hanamaki took a sip from their drink. “Just in time, too- look who’s arrived.”

There was something of a din being made at the entrance of the venue, where very tall men were entering, and a handful of women. Some paparazzi lingered nearby, taking photos, and Oikawa noticed the man leading the group had the widest grin he had ever seen. There was a bit of commotion near the back, where a man near the back shielded his face from photos with the nylon sleeve of his jacket.

Ushijima was quickly by Oikawa’s side again, a cautionary hand clasping his elbow. And suddenly, Oikawa understood why; the man in the back had dropped his elbow to reveal a surly face.

“Kageyama? Is this asshole really still part of my life?”

“He’s not part of your life, but you hate when you have to interview him for the magazine,” murmured Ushijima. “You two have been on- relatively- good terms recently. Please don’t ruin that peace.”

The man in front- who Oikawa quickly understood to be Bokuto, that one ace- was slapping everyone on the back heartily, laughing. His hair was plain black, now, and not gelled up into that ridiculous hairstyle of his. When he made his way to Oikawa, he greeted him with the same level of excitement and affection, as if they were old friends- which Oikawa doubted- and a wink, moving on and letting the rest of his team say their hellos in his wake. Oikawa didn’t recognize the rest of them until Kageyama surfaced before him.

“Ushijima-san,” he said, jerking his head in a sort of bow. “Oikawa-san.”

“Hello, King,” said Oikawa, unable to help himself. “Where’s Chibi-chan?”

Kageyama’s face dropped into one of mild surprise. “Hinata’s here?”

“As a guest, I believe,” assented Ushijima. “I think I saw him on the roster.”

“Wait, he isn’t on the team?”

Kageyama grimaced. “He got himself kicked off the team because he couldn’t listen to the captain, but we’ve kept it under wraps so far- we’re hoping we can get him back on before anything becomes official. But then he ran off… I haven’t heard from him in weeks. If he’s here, though, maybe I can…” he trailed off and peeled away from his group, supposedly in the search of Hinata.

“What’s gotten into him?”

“Him and Hinata-san seemed to be getting along, when I last saw them. Less quarreling than ever. I’m sure Hinata’s dismissal ruined that.”

Oikawa was already beyond this information, and decided to find Hinata himself. He had spent too long feeling nervous around Iwaizumi and now suddenly realized he wanted some distance. This was difficult to manage, however, when five minutes into his search of the ground floor Iwaizumi began trailing him silently, ostensibly having nothing better to do.

“So,” said Oikawa, scouring the men’s bathroom. No telltale red hair. “Er…”

“Matsukawa and Hanamaki left,” explained Iwaizumi. “They took the night off. I don’t know anyone else around here. I thought we could talk, while you do… whatever it is, you’re doing right now.”

“I’m looking for Hinata-san. You know, the short one, from Karasuno? Kageyama wants him for something, and I want to figure out what the trouble is between them.”

“You could ask Kageyama.”

“Or I could figure it out myself and have the leverage,” countered Oikawa. “He’s not in the bathroom, anyways. Let’s try the second floor.”

Iwaizumi was silent again, until halfway through the flight. “So you’re trying to meddle in their relationship, is what you’re doing.”

“Sure. It’s not as if I have anything better to do until tomorrow.”

“What are you doing these days, anyways?”

Oikawa rolled his eyes. “So many questions, Iwa-chan. Don’t you have a boyfriend to go pester?”

Iwaizumi shook his head. If Oikawa didn’t know him better, he would think he was on the verge of a smile. “He doesn’t get off work for a while. So no, not tonight.”

Oikawa found Hinata quickly once on the second floor. He was by the bar, slumped over in his seat, and clearly drunk. He was also in a lackluster hoodie, and stuck out from the semi-formality of the crowd surrounding him.

“Hello,” said Oikawa unsurely. “Chibi- I mean, Hinata-san?”

“Buy me a drink, first,” said Hinata into the table. He turned, and his already flushed face grew redder. “Oh. I thought you were- never mind. Hullo.”

Oikawa took a seat next to him, while Iwaizumi flanked his other side and ordered a round. “Hi. Look, I just want to have a few words. About Kageyama- I’m not trying to mediate anything, I’m just being nosy, because I have nothing better to do with my night. So what’s the news?”

Hinata scrunched his face up. “Kageyama. Bakayama. He- he’s a no-good athlete, and he smells bad, and he’s completely dense. Is that enough for a quote, Oikawa-sama?”  

“Didn’t you two live together?” asked Iwaizumi. “Last I read about it.”

“And he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut with the press,” added Hinata. “And he treats me like a child. As if I’ve never been reprimanded before. As if this is the first time… I mean, I know he’s a genius. A lot of us are geniuses. Even you’re a genius, Oikawa-sama. But if you’re like me, and you get where you get by working every day, every night, and suddenly some genius tells you you’re not working hard enough, as if they’ve worked a day in their life-”

“This is more than enough for a quote,” said Oikawa simply to Iwaizumi, as Hinata droned on. “And also quite entertaining. Are you getting this down somewhere? I think I’m not going to remember all of this tomorrow, I’m a bit drunk.”

“Eh,” said Iwaizumi. “Me too. I’m sure it’ll stick, somehow.”

“Don’t mock me,” emphasized Hinata, sulking. “It’s rude. Like other people I know!”

Iwaizumi smirked, and Oikawa felt his stomach jump. “Let me take a wild guess as to who that is.”

He didn’t have to. Kageyama appeared suddenly, placing a hand on Hinata’s shoulder, who nearly flinched off his stool. Upon realizing it was Kageyama, he blanched, enough so that his face was nearly the color of Kageyama’s pale knuckles. They stared at one another; Kageyama with an expression of arresting focus, Hinata with one of gauche reproach. Oikawa was suddenly discomfited.

“I’ve called you,” said Kageyama simply. “A lot.”

Hinata wringed his hands. “Yes.”

“And you never called back…”

“It wasn’t fair.”

“It wasn’t fair to me, either! I was fucking worried-”

“Well, you didn’t have to be!”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” started Kageyama, infuriated. He caught himself, and seemed to notice Oikawa and Iwaizumi for the first time. “Oh. Hey… again.”

“We better get going,” said Iwaizumi. He tugged his jacket, by the collar, uncomfortable as well. “We have that thing to do, anyways.”

“I don’t want to leave just yet,” pondered Oikawa aloud. An idea had struck him. “I respect whatever it is that you two have between you, but I just realized that I have yet to play volleyball in this body.”

“What,” said Kageyama. “Is this a new body?”

“Don’t worry about that. How about it, though? We have a little scrimmage? Iwa-chan’s obviously in, so…”

“Don’t drag me into this-”

“Hush. Besides, I think it’ll be a good way for you to get out some excess energy, and this party is getting boring, and I heard moving makes people sober up, so…”

“Okay,” said Hinata slowly. Kageyama’s eyes bugged out at him. “Oh, please. As if you don’t wanna play against Grand King again.”

Oikawa clapped his hands together, smiling in the dim light of the bar. “It’s decided, then.”

***

Iwaizumi ended up being the one who got them to a court and procuring a ball. He had one in his car, for whatever reason; and though the court was outside, at a public park nearby, the sight of the weathered away boundaries under fluorescent lights made Oikawa feel at ease.

They began with warm-ups, making Oikawa’s forearms red and sore in ways he hadn’t felt in ages. Perhaps it really had been some time since he had last played in this body. Iwaizumi was still in good-shape, and Kageyama and Hinata were- well, clearly still playing at a national level. Oikawa marveled at the number of plays they had perfected as second nature, and as time proceeded, even he could tell Kageyama was pleased by the strained smile he was struggling to conceal.

“Okay,” shouted Hinata, eventually. “Let’s get to it, then! Who wants to serve first?”

Iwaizumi looked at Oikawa expectantly, who felt a surge of excitement at the thought of serving an ace. “Why, I wouldn’t mind going first…”

And so it began. His first serve was an ace; his second wasn’t, and once the ball was in play, Hinata and Kageyama immediately began to prove themselves. Iwaizumi, who had ostensibly not played in a number of months, faltered for a number of the first few plays before getting back in the rhythm of things. By the time Hinata and Kageyama won the first set, Oikawa felt exhausted in his chest, but pumped by the undercurrent of competition and sense of belonging. This was the Iwaizumi he knew, and at least that hadn’t changed. He was in his undershirt from the sweat by the time Kuroo and Ushijima came upon them.

“We were walking towards our cars,” said Kuroo, grinning widely, “But it seems as though we’ve happened on something much better. You guys open to a few more players?”

“Kuroo-san!” yelled Hinata. “Yes!”

Bokuto joined sometime after that, much to Kuroo’s infinite enthusiasm, and then a motley of players Oikawa didn’t recognize, and then Suga, and then Matsukawa, who was back from dropping Hanamaki off at the train station. By the point they had more or less two teams, and Oikawa relished the strain and heat in his upper arm and legs, the sweat beading by his temple. Even though Kageyama and Hinata’s side were creaming them soundly- which he attributed to the fact that they practiced for hours daily- the fun was still in it, at least.

“You seem yourself,” Iwaizumi noted once the second game was over, and people were dispersing. He took a long drink from his bottle of water, and offered it to Oikawa. “I haven’t done that in ages. Drunk volleyball, as in. Seems like a lot of people were happy to do it.” He glanced back, at Kuroo, who was wrestling in fun with Bokuto; at Suga, who was ruffling Hinata’s hair; at Ushijima, lost in conversation with Matsukawa. “It’s getting late, though. I can walk you home, if you’d like.”

Oikawa took a sip from the bottle. He was definitely less drunk, but the longer he sat still, the more he felt it again. “Sure,” he said. “That’d be helpful.”

As they walked, Iwaizumi seemed silent and lost in thought, giving him sidelong glances once every few steps. He was clenching at his jacket, in a way that made Oikawa wonder if he, too, was feeling nervous at their sudden solitude.

“Hey,” said Oikawa, suddenly. “You never told me about the last time we saw each other. The time before the Tokyu Hands. Or Sendai.”

Iwaizumi colored in the face. “Well…” He cleared his throat, and paused for a long while. “I guess, I could tell you. Don’t freak out, okay?”

Oikawa laughed, threw his head back. “Why would I freak out?”

“I just have a feeling you will.”

Oikawa pursed his lips, and threw Iwaizumi a sidelong glance. He steadfastly ignored Oikawa's look, and was gnawing at his bottom lip himself, as if debating whether to go forward with his story or not. Oikawa had his suspicions- after what Ushijima and the rest of the lot had said- but he was not so earnest as to bet on any of them yet. He shrugged. "Let's hear it, then." 

Chapter Text

“Well, I’ve never been somewhere like this before,” said Hanamaki lightly.

“You said you want to be a good ally or whatever the fuck, right?” hissed Iwaizumi. “So this is what that involves!”

“I don’t know, I think you can be a good straight ally without accompanying your friends to their first gay nightclub experience, but what do I know.”

“It’s actually homophobic to not actively be doing that,” remarked Matsukawa off-handedly. He was gazing off at the couples dancing on the floor further ahead. “For your information.”

Hanamaki rapped his fingers against his temple. “Ah. Much obliged.”

Iwaizumi tried unclenching his jaw for the fifth time since he had spotted the blinding neon lights of the club outside. It had taken him ten minutes to muster up the courage to step inside- to his company’s immense amusement, although they had provided pep-talks at all the appropriate pauses- and now, situated within the flashy interior, he felt terror grip his chest again. The music was resounding in his ribcage.

“Iwaizumi,” said Hanamaki. “It’s alright if you don’t want to do this tonight. We can do this later.”

“I’m twenty, I want to get this out of the way.”

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I want to.”

“I’m going to get us shots,” announced Matsukawa. Iwaizumi could barely make out his expression under the shifting colored lights strobing across the warm, close room before he turned and disappeared into the horde of people. On instinct, Iwaizumi reached out and grabbed Hanamaki’s hand.

“Flattering, but I don’t think I’m a viable target for you tonight,” said Hanamaki, raising his brow. The brow itself was nearly invisible now, due to the recent bleaching of it; Iwaizumi admitted to himself that Hanamaki’s new style choices were certainly compelling in a mysterious way.

“Don’t go,” Iwaizumi said beseechingly. He absolutely could not do this alone. The dance floor was densely packed, just on this side of claustrophobic, and everyone was laughing, covered in a sheen of sweat, grabbing each other by the arm and neck and waist. The thought of a man’s palm alone on Iwaizumi’s jaw had ritually sent him into a deep embarrassment when he fantasized as such privately. He did not want to fathom what his reaction would be when dealing with the repercussions of physicality; his most optimistic realization was one where he didn’t throw up on someone.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Hanamaki. “Though seeing you nervous about something is a refreshing take.”

Matsukawa rematerialized with little noise, presenting a tray of shots. Iwaizumi took two and a half, gagging halfway through his third, and deciding not to risk it. Hanamaki took two, and Matsukawa sipped (weird) through four. By the time Matsukawa was done with his last glass, Iwaizumi was feeling even less capable of holding an intelligent conversation than before. This meant he was ready to go dance.

He worked his way through the crowd, leaving Hanamaki and Matsukawa behind, by the bar; and after swaying awkwardly on the outskirts, he began to enjoy the music, and managed to not evaporate on the spot when another boy smiled at him and beckoned him to dance with him. He grew tired, though, and took his leave to the bathroom, which was occupied for too long. He had worked up a rant in his head by the time the occupant finally exited.

“What took you so long-” he began, pissed, before cutting himself off with shocked silence. The man before him was- Oikawa. Oikawa, who he hadn’t seen in some two years, besides in a magazine here, a news interview there, which had failed to do justice to the Oikawa before him, vaguely taller and wider around the arms, slumping against the wall, locks of sweaty hair plastered to his forehead. He had mascara streaking down the left side of his face and cheap glitter in his hair.

“You,” said Iwaizumi. He was so taken aback that he could feel his heartbeat in his ears. He scrambled for the right words to say; perhaps something casual, to the tune of why did you abandon me, you dumb fucking asshole? He did, indeed, try to say this, but his throat choked around the words, and he made a series of scratchy, guttural noises instead. This was around the time Oikawa had the good manners to look up and into his face. It took several moments for him to focus his attention on Iwaizumi’s eyes, but once he did, he too gasped.

“Oh!” he said, innocently, as if they had run into each other at a high-school reunion. “I- Iwaizumi!”

Iwaizumi somehow found his vocal cords. “What the fuck are you-”

“Sh.” His index finger to Iwaizumi’s mouth. “Listen… I’m very drunk. I don’t care- about whatever- is behind us. I’m sure you’re surprised to see me here. Because I’m-”

“Gay?” A thought so staggering that Iwaizumi buckled briefly at the knees.

Oikawa laughed, somewhat nervously. His eyes certainly darted around. “Yes- well, not in so many words.  Or… I said I’m drunk, right? And my team doesn’t really know I’m here. Except Ushijima…”

“What’s your point?”

Oikawa grabbed him by the arm. “I’m forgetting myself. How are you?”

“I’m… I don’t even know what to say to you right now.” He ripped his arm away, stumbled a few feet back in the hall. “We aren’t friends anymore.”

Oikawa pushed the hair away from his forehead and gave a forlorn smile. “Yeah… no thanks to me, huh?” His cheeks took on a slight flush, but he stepped forward and tilted his head forward in the coquettish manner Iwaizumi had seen him do with so many girls. “But I also heard you wanted to be more than friends with me.”

Iwaizumi felt his stomach turn, with fury and anxiety. “I can’t believe you. That is so rude, you’re so empty, and-”

“Before you say more things you don’t mean, do you want to dance while I’m still drunk enough to think it’s a good idea?”

“But I do mean it, you horrible piece of… what?”

Oikawa laughed. “Yes! To work out all that unresolved sexual tension.” He winked, sloppishly and with some effort. “And- yes- I’m trying to imply that crush was fairly requited. Even though I didn’t realize that until last month.”

Oikawa was so clearly inebriated that he was in no state to receive a thorough yelling at, lacking the emotional capacity to engage at even a basic level. His slithering-out tendencies were just too pronounced in this state. This was on top of Iwaizumi’s own drunkenness. These facts blunted Iwaizumi’s wrath, and he couldn’t help but respond. “Are you trying to flirt with me? Because if you are, you’re horrible at it.”

“Hurtful. I’m new to this.” He gave Iwaizumi a quizzical once-over. “But I doubt you aren’t, either.”

Feeling put-upon, Iwaizumi nodded.

“Are we going to dance, then? Unless you came with someone.”

“Matsukawa.”

Oikawa’s jaw dropped, gently but with considerable weight. “He…?”

“Ha. And Hanamaki- they’re here for support. Just wanted to see how you’d react.”

“Maybe not so new to this after all. Come on! I can tell you’re drunk, too, so let’s do it and say it was because we’re being stupid.”

Iwaizumi frowned to himself as he got dragged out back by the wrist to the dance floor. He had forgotten that Oikawa had a peculiar way of being too direct when he was finally able to overcome his inhibitions. But he allowed himself to be pulled, and allowed himself to be arranged on the floor and crowded against the sweaty backs of others, and even allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of Oikawa’s hand on his hip. It didn’t feel real, and he decided that he could indulge the bizarreness of the encounter and the night and his life. He was pretty sure he had seen Hanamaki- or someone looking exactly like him- kissing some man while he was getting puppeteered to and fro; things no longer had to make sense.

And then they really didn’t. Moving his hips had become grinding (Iwaizumi’s face was on fire) and had become Oikawa’s hand lodged underneath his left buttock. And Iwaizumi- despite himself- wondered what this would become, and if he would be lucky enough to follow Oikawa home and feel how his stomach had changed in the last two years. But then he looked up, and realized he had never seen Oikawa so drunk, and that was because they had not been together at their respective twentieth birthdays, and that was because they were newly estranged. Oikawa’s breath was fanning down the nape of his neck, and all he could think of was how Oikawa had spent the weeks after his coming-out (a day after that horrible grad party) ignoring his texts and calls.

His stomach began to fall, and he hated the feeling so vehemently that he turned his face into Oikawa’s, and then they were kissing. It was chaste, as if Oikawa himself was astonished that his stilted seduction had worked. And Iwaizumi enjoyed it as it deepened, and he let his mind think of when he liked Oikawa and the times they had spent talking on the phone late at night together, so that he could savor it for longer; but he could not let his resentment leave him. It was clenched in the front of his mind, acidic and depressing. He pulled away. Oikawa stared at him.

“Oh,” he said. He, too, was disoriented, and this effect was furthered by the colored lights flashing over his face. “Iwa-chan?”

Iwaizumi sighed. “Iwaizumi,” he reminded, quietly but with force. “Listen. I know you’re drunk, and I am too, but you really ruined my life for a while there. I don’t care if you’re too gone to understand what I mean. I’m happy with who I am now… without you. This is not how I want you to re-enter my life.”

“Oh,” said Oikawa again. Iwaizumi noted that his eyebrow still twitched the same way when he was deeply wounded. But his expressed cleared over, and he raised his eyebrow coolly. “Do you want me to re-enter it at all? Because I don’t need you, you know. I don’t need…”

But Iwaizumi had already drawn away, breaking his arm from Oikawa’s grasp, and the rest of his words were drowned in the clamor of the club. He gave him one last look- Oikawa was no longer even looking at him, just frowning to himself, wiping a hand against his damp forehead- and then Iwaizumi turned away and used his elbows to make way to the other end of the club, from where he had entered. Matsukawa was still close enough to the outskirts of the dancing that he could grab him by the arm.

“Hey,” said Matsukawa. His voice was vaguely strained. “You’re back. You want more drinks? I don’t. Hey, did you see Hanamaki? He was looking different. Or, he wasn’t. I mean, the position he was in, was different. And the guy he was kissing was different.” He coughed. “Or the fact it was a guy at all. Alright, I’m not trying to make a big deal of anything. I just had no idea. You want more drinks?”

Iwaizumi chose to ignore this entire debacle. “Oikawa’s here.”

“Oh, fuck.” His eyes were wide. “Why is he…? Oh, fuck. Really? Dude… that’s shit. I’m sorry. Do you wanna leave? I can get Makki from- wherever he is right now.”

“We kissed.”

Matsukawa did something of a silent triple take, which was one of the strongest reactions of surprise Iwaizumi had ever elicited from him. “You? And him?”

“Yes. Only for a little. And we were dancing. And I could feel his dick on my thigh.”

“Whoa. Uh, yeah, let’s go. I’m sure Makki can bear to part with whoever.”

“Yeah,” sighed Iwaizumi. He wished for things to make sense, even if they didn’t have to; he liked his life better that way.

***

“So we kissed?” said Oikawa, as they neared his apartment. Iwaizumi couldn’t tell if he was affronted or not, in the darkness. His voice was clipped, at the very least.

“Among other things,” admitted Iwaizumi. “That was a very long time ago.”

“I’m confused.”

“About…?”

“I knew? When I was twenty? That’s two years from my old self. From now, basically. If this hadn’t happened- the sudden amnesia, or whatever- I don’t feel like I would have known by then. Or ever.”

Iwaizumi laughed. “I don’t think you get it. It was probably always there. It’s not something that just pops up. I think that’s why you were confused by me that one summer- because you thought you would have known forever, and you felt like I had been lying to you for years. But I was lying to everyone. Myself included.”

Oikawa mulled over this, but was too fatigued to think. He said the first thing that came to mind, the thing that had been loitering in the front of his thoughts for the last week, the reason he had wanted to be with Iwaizumi tonight at all. “I want to be your friend again.” When he closed his eyes for too long, he felt as if he could keel right over in space. He could barely grasp the words slipping out of his mouth. “The way we used to be. Why can’t we be friends like that?”

Iwaizumi had his lips pursed in a way he hadn’t seen before, and, staring at it, Oikawa thought of how Iwaizumi had acquired many new expressions and miens since he last saw him as a teenager. He closed his eyes again, and swayed in place. He felt the cool air press against his cheek.

“We can’t go back and pretend something that happened didn’t happen,” said Iwaizumi. Oikawa blinked open his eyes, and focused them on Iwaizumi again. “No one can. This isn’t special to you and me.”

“But that’s the thing. We were special,” emphasized Oikawa, poking his finger into Iwaizumi’s chest. “I don’t see why… I mean, who’s like me? To you? Right now?”

“Kondo,” said Iwaizumi. He bit his lip. “Mattsun. Makki.”

“Who is Kondo?!” exclaimed Oikawa, frustrated and lost. He tilted forward, and Iwaizumi’s grabbed him by the forearms.

“You’re still tipsy? My boyfriend.”

“Oh, don’t even get me started on the boyfriend, Iwaizumi,” growled Oikawa, remembering and forgetting the nondescript face of Kondo many times in rapid succession. “Really? Of all the viable, virile men in Tokyo, you picked the one with the most uninteresting, bland personality.”

“You talked to him for five minutes. How would you know what he’s like? I don’t know what you’re like anymore.”

“I know a lot about personality. I, for example, am full of personality. Some would say to a fault, but… hold on. You mean that your boyfriend is who I am to you? You mean-”

“It’s not a secret that I liked you in high school,” said Iwaizumi dejectedly. “So what?”

So nothing. So everything! Oikawa was not shocked, having been told the theories of others and the matter of their shared kiss, but it was another thing entirely for Iwaizumi to tell him clearly. He felt Iwaizumi’s fingers grasp him through his jacket, a comforting pressure, and he lolled his head forward, only partially out of his own accord. The world rotated around him, like his head was the sun.

“So something. That’s not my point right now. I don’t- I still have a feeling that I’m not an amnesiac. That this is some ironic curse. Or a quest, I don’t know. But this is also real life. I think once I figure out what to do, if I do it right, I can go back to the real me. But at the same time, this version of me existed. Exists. This is who I am with my mistakes.”

“I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re fucking yammering about,” admitted Iwaizumi. “Can you smile for me, and raise both hands above your head? Look me in the eyes.”

“I am not having a stroke!” yelled Oikawa, stumbling on his feet so that he was shorter that Iwaizumi, who continued holding him up. He really wasn’t that drunk, but he took the excuse as a slim pretext to act honestly in this moment. “I mean that- this is me with my mistakes. I won’t make them again once I go back, obviously. But I want to believe that I can fix them, right now. Do you understand? Things can’t be totally irreparable.”

Iwaizumi looked down at him. “Idiot. Some things are impossible to recover.”

“Why?”

“Because things change. And you’re still drunk.”

“We can’t be friends again because I’m tipsy? That’s harsh.”

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes and shouldered Oikawa off so that he was on his feet again. “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. I think you should be getting home now. Go on.”

“Okay.” Oikawa gave Iwaizumi one last embrace- tight around the shoulders, allowing him to smell the new conditioner he was apparently using- and was glad to find that he returned it with equal strength as he squeezed Oikawa’s ribcage. Somehow the hug made him feel more assured in his body, as if things would be fine, but then Iwaizumi detached himself and he was bleak and small again.

“Later,” said Iwaizumi. Oikawa waved back. His heart was still beating slightly faster than normal.
He turned briskly into the building, and thought about how he had been feeling around Iwaizumi lately, and even before, when he was young (a mere three days ago) in light of Matsukawa’s and Hanamaki’s earlier observations. Sure, he had refused to anchor himself to a romantic relationship; volleyball was enough for him, as were his small group of friends. And he enjoyed the vanity and the fawning of his fan club, which assured him that he wasn’t wretched-looking or socially inept. But he also liked spending time with Iwaizumi, and staring brazenly at the way he would stretch his neck, or the tips of his ears, or even his endearingly large forehead. It was likely he had never identified the way he was drawn to Iwaizumi as attraction because of how early on it had started, coupled with his own understanding that being gay simply wasn’t an option.

The thought that by twenty he’d be kissing Iwaizumi- albeit under uncomfortable and upsetting circumstances- was one that still shook him, but did not repulse him. He hadn’t minded kissing Takemoto. And when he closed his eyes in the lift and considered what it would be like to kiss his own time’s Iwaizumi- say, on his bed, after Iwaizumi had passed on that pathetically cute diorama, or in an empty classroom after practice- he liked it, and he liked thinking about it, and it took effort to not nose down the path for longer. But that it had taken this to come to a conclusion that was sitting in front of him this whole time was absurd.

He walked into his flat, and began readying for bed. Surely he’d have come to pertinent conclusions earlier if he’d known that being gay was personally permissible. That it were a possibility.

So he liked men. He still wasn’t completely comfortable in the realization that he was bi, but it was a step that he could admit it, and another step that he could consider intimacy with Iwaizumi. A thought was brewing.

***

“So I’ve been thinking,” he announced the next day to Ushijima as they continued to draft their project. They were well into translating (or attempting to translate) the magazine’s written form onto the new website, which wasn’t without its errors in design and structure.

“That doesn’t bode well.”

“Har har. I meant about what article we should open on for the new site. We’ve been reading a lot of technical stuff about national-level players, and it’s interesting, but doesn’t our audience include a lot of amateurs? Novices?”

Ushijima raised his eyebrows. “Sure. I read Number when I was in middle school.”

“And do you remember not understanding half of it back then? Don’t get me wrong, I read it too, and I all but memorized the statistics of the volleyball players, their strengths, their plays, their faults- but nothing back then talked about the other parts of being an athlete besides just training. Like how personal team dynamics play a part in matches. Or how taking care of your body isn’t just stretching once in a while. How to deal with getting taken out of the game, maybe because of injuries or- misbehavior. Or even…I don’t know. That whole thing you were talking about earlier. About being an athlete and gay. How that goes.”

“That’s not half-bad.”

“Right?” said Oikawa. He let out a nervous laugh. “I was thinking about it after that game we played. The one after the gala, you know? It was just for fun. Writing to our more casual readers might appeal to them.”

“We’re likely to have a lot of pushback, too,” said Ushijima. “Especially if we follow the narrative of non-conformance. People would suggest we’re trying to politicize the magazine in a manner it wasn’t, previously.”

“So what? It’s been political this whole time. I don’t know everyone who’s not straight among all the volleyball players from our time, but it’s more than I expected. And so many of them aren’t talking about it. Maybe I would have known more about myself, earlier, if I had known that it was a possibility, for men like me. Maybe it’ll be easier for other readers in a similar situation. Look- I already have leads, though I’d have to ask if they were alright with outing themselves.”

“It’s an uncertain move. But I’m not explicitly opposed to it.”

Oikawa shrugged, and dug his thumbs into his pockets. “Redesign is always uncertain. This is what I want to write about.”

“Then write it. We’ll pitch it to K-san in a few days, if you’re ready by then with your leads.”

A leer. “I know just who to start with.”

***

“Er,” said Kageyama, upon laying his eyes on Oikawa. He was shirtless and in a towel, fresh from a shower and at his front door. “How do you know where I live?”

“We have records from the last time we did an interview here. Also I called your coach. Why did you open the front door if you weren’t dressed?”

“I ask him that too,” peeped Hinata, coming up behind Kageyama. He was relatively more clothed, in a loose t-shirt and his boxers, but Oikawa thought this was setting the bar rather low. He wanted badly to mention that it was noon on a weekday, but their practice started late on Wednesdays, so it was technically excusable.

“Clothing aside, I’m here to pitch you something. Number’s doing a redesign. I was wondering if you two want to be part of the flagship article we’ll be writing for it- which, by the way, is a huge privilege that wouldn’t be ordinarily extended towards athletes who answer the door half-naked. So consider it an extremely gracious offer! And could I come in.”

He said the end bit as he pushed his way inside anyways. Kageyama looked acutely irritated, but Hinata was happy to welcome him in and show him around the reasonably-sized flat; of the two, Oikawa always found him vexingly easy-to-like. He was also in a far better mood, now that he was back with Kageyama and theoretically back on the team- Oikawa could tell, because every few minutes he would wrap his hands together and clench, smiling widely, trying to release excess giddiness. And Kageyama loosely shadowed the two of them, as if he could not bear to separate himself too far from Hinata.

“You two make me sick,” declared Oikawa as he eventually sat across the two of them on the couch. “Not in a homophobic way, which is, by the way, partly why I’m here. Just in the sickeningly transparent way you’re in love. Which is why you’re the perfect candidates for my pitch.”

Hinata tensed, and pulled his legs onto the couch. His usually cheerful face was ridden with wariness. “You want us to come out to the press?”

“What?” said Kageyama. He had been twitchy and annoyed since Oikawa had started talking, but now his forehead was creased angrily. “You can’t just come in- and ask that. Don’t fuck around.”

“Why would you even want that?” adds Hinata. “Are you trying to bomb our careers or something? After all this time? You just retired a few years ago—you don’t need to be vindictive.”

“I’m not trying to be.” Kageyama snorted, and Oikawa didn’t blame him; it would certainly be a first. But he continued: “I confess that I haven’t been hugely pleasant figure all the time, but several things have changed in the last few years. I’ve reflected on my maladaptive ways. I’ve been born anew. Whatever way you want to consider it. I’m not sure if I’ve shared this part of myself with you yet, but I’m gay too. Or bi, specifically.”

Hinata stared at him confusedly, and then began laughing; even Kageyama quirked a small, if perplexed, smile.

“Uh, yeah, we figured,” said Hinata, tilting his head onto Kageyama’s shoulder. “Like, ages ago. We wouldn’t have even talked to you about our fight if we didn’t know that. Are you back with that guy from high-school? The one Kageyama likes? He was at that party, I remember.”

“Iwaizumi-san,” supplied Kageyama. “You were with him?”

“No,” snapped Oikawa. He stopped himself from wondering if other people had assumed the same. “Besides the point. But that other bit, that bit matters- you wouldn’t have been honest with me about your troubles if you didn’t know I was bi. Why?”

“Because then we’d be taking a chance,” said Kageyama slowly, as if speaking to a child. “A chance most athletes aren’t going to be taking when they talk to someone in the field. Things haven’t changed that much yet. We’re still supposed to be…” he gestured weakly. “Men.”

“But you are a man.”

He shrugged; Hinata looked distinctly uncomfortable. “To you. Not to everyone. My dad, for one.”

Oikawa felt dreadful about hearing this personal tidbit. “Yes. But there are a lot of them like us, out there. Not straight, but still men, and still athletes. The more who come out, the more it’ll be okay to talk about it, and the less we’ll have to hide ourselves. And readers who feel alone… high-schoolers, for example, who don’t know shit- they’d know it’s conceivable for them to be successful and happy and themselves.”

Hinata put a hand to his nape, holding it awkwardly. “That’s really sweet. It really is. But we can’t take that chance, just the two of us. We need- I don’t know, ten other people to come forward too, or else it’ll be too risky. Too alone.”

Oikawa had expected something like this; he had even given it some thought the last night. He scratched the cloth of the carpet with his index fingernail. “I can try. But could I have your names down until I get the other five? And how prolific do you want the other ones to be? Can they be retired?”

Hinata nodded. “Yeah, why not. Kageyama?”

“When is this going to be out by?” asked Kageyama, who seemed much more at ease than Hinata. “The date, as in. I have something coming up, and the way it goes can change depending on when this’ll be published by.”

“With luck, by next week,” said Oikawa. “If it’s any consolation, I promise I’ll use my utmost discretion.”

Judging by Kageyama’s surprised laughter, it wasn’t much consolation at all. But they had given him what he needed- he just had to rattle ten more up.

***

“You want what?” repeated Sugawara, evidentially concerned. “I can’t tell if this is another test. And I don’t know if it’s ethical. Sir?”

Oikawa sighed, and kicked his legs back onto his desk. “A list of all the gay athletes you know. Please. We can keep it off the records, but I just need to follow up with some leads, and only if they consent, does anything then happen.”

“What’s this even for?”

“My new pitch. Article. For the revamped site- it’s about the other parts of sports that we don’t talk about. Including sexuality. And it’s very difficult for me to go up to people and ask if they’re gay, so I was wondering if you had some known-in-the-field information…”

Sugawara gawked at him. “That’s a new development.”

“For the magazine? Yeah, but I figure I have nothing to lose-”

“No,” said Sugawara, emphatically. “For your personality. I mean. Sorry, sir, but you barely ever… I’m just surprised. I’d actually read Number if they put out that article. But I’ll try to find you some people- I just need to ask them first if they’re alright with me sharing.”

“Blasphemous,” said Oikawa. “You don’t read the magazine you work at?”

Sugawara laughed, genuinely and wonderfully. “As if. You know, you’ve been actually bearable this last week. Things could work out here if you keep it up.” He left from the doorway soon after, as Matsukawa walked in in his place.

“What a cheeky, saucy little thing,” he said, smirking at Sugawara’s retreating form. He turned to Oikawa. “I can see why you fell for his devilish wiles so long ago.”

Oikawa grimaced. “You sound like an old-fashioned pervert.”

“Torrid affairs aside, I’m here to talk to you about the new pitch. Ushijima just told me about it- no details, just the general approach.” He placed both his hands on Oikawa’s desk, like a gate to his legs. “I was wondering if I could write for it, too. About the physical wellness part. And the mental wellness, if that’s up for grabs.”

“Sure,” said Oikawa. That would lift some of the responsibility off him. “The more the merrier. Feel free to collaborate with Ushijima on those parts.”

“Sweet. I have just the people I want to hit up. I’ll fill you in on it in a few days. You have any interviewees yet?”

Oikawa glanced at his open laptop screen, which had all his hopefuls listed out. “Optimistically, more in the near future. It’s hard to get people to want to out themselves for this.”

Matsukawa clicked his tongue. “I can’t imagine why.”

***

“And here I was, thinking I had been left high and dry for good,” said Takemoto musically, the next day. His own apartment was really, really nice; a spanning view of the city, indoor hot tubs, glass chairs, a well-supplied alcohol closet from which he had offered drinks to Oikawa at least three times since he had arrived. The décor was all peculiar and new-agey in a way that suggested its proprietor had more money than one knew what to do with. Oikawa wondered jealously why his past self had not asked to move-in with him in here, but then surmised it was due to commitment issues (or something). Takemoto eyed him inquiringly. “Did Iwa-chan not put out yet?” 

“Shut up.” Goodness, Oikawa was loath to believe he was alike to this man in the given reality. “I’m here for purely work-related reasons. You wanna be gay in public?”

“Uh,” said Takemoto, his voice significantly flatter. “How do you mean.”

He had accidentally pitched too directly, but that was Takemoto’s fault for flustering him. “For the redesign. An article on being a gay athlete, and related sundry. I’m looking for interviewees.”

“Oh,” said Takemoto, a relieved breath escaping him. “Oh, that’s- that’s fine. Ha! I thought you were blackmailing me. You still have my photos.” He raised his eyebrows. “And our videos, though that would damn the both of us.”

“That’s enough!” said Oikawa, suddenly fascinated with the ceiling. “That’s quite enough. Let’s just focus on the matter at hand. I’m not going to write it unless a number of other people come out, too, so you don’t have to worried about intense scrutiny. It’ll just be a short interview, some basic questions about how sports affected your ability to live as a gay man.”

“Hm.” Takemoto turned away from him and paced his apartment with his hands clasped behind him. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m going to retire anyways, so it wouldn’t be as critical a hit. But I was thinking about being a high school coach. That’s...  not the sort of mark I want on my name.”

This complicated things, but Oikawa was resolute. “There’s no pressure to do anything you’re not ready to. But it could make a big difference to a lot of readers. And you’re obviously financially set, so you have some time to consider your future career. I’m just scouting the field for now.”

“It’s sweet, what you’re trying to do,” admitted Takemoto. “And gutsy. I like that.”

“Gutsy enough to get you to do it?”

 Takemoto turned around, and put a finger to his lip. “You may have me pinned down. Contrary to prior belief, I do have a very, very mild moral compass. Who can say no to inspiring the youth by being a role model?”

Oikawa studied him. Maybe the man legitimately cared for children, and maybe he wouldn’t mind turning out like Takemoto so much. “Glad to have you down as a yes, then.” 

He left after a quick lunch with him, where he repeated that- to his knowledge, Kondo was still happily dating Iwaizumi, and no he shouldn’t approach him. There was only one person left to approach that he personally knew. The rest would be relative strangers.

“Oikawa-san. I was wondering when you’d drop by.”

Oikawa wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Kuroo’s office; something minimal and of the times. But it was far from immaculate, and littered with crumpled memos, forgotten post-it notes, and- inexplicably- cheesy, motivational cat posters and toys. Situated in the center of the chaos was Kuroo, his top button unbuttoned, his reading glasses on as he clicked away at his desktop. He gave Oikawa a measured look. Oikawa marveled at how this man had emerged from the snide teenager that he previously knew. “How’s the pitch going?”

 “Shacho-san,” he said, bowing. He gave a short summary of his pitch, and wished dearly that he had the foresight to video record Kuroo’s reaction to it. “And- given that we’re looking for people in the field, and not solely past national athletes, I was wondering ifyouwantedtobepartofit.”

“Pardon?” said Kuroo, doing that brushing-away motion to his ghost hair. Or perhaps Oikawa was reading into things. Maybe he really was just brushing his now shorter bangs away. “You want me to come out for the article?” His eyes were squinted and his head extended, as if he was concerned that he had misheard Oikawa. 

Oikawa held his hands out placatingly. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But technically you have the least to lose, career-wise- you’re the head of the magazine and can’t really have your reputation slandered. And it would be a big deal, and make others more likely to participate.” He wringed his hands, and suddenly realized he had no recollection of his work relationship to Kuroo. This could be a drastic mistake, one that endangered his job. He could be massively overstepping boundaries.

“How did you even know I’m bi?” Kuroo asked, eventually, looking at Oikawa over the top of his glasses. “We’ve never talked about it. You and I, as in. Even if office gossip is a powerful force.”

“I thought you and pudding head-chan were together.” He had cobbled together that assumption several days after hearing Matsukawa that first day, but now he doubted that too. 

Kuroo pursed his lips. He began to look less like a disheveled ass and more like an actual boss. “We just live together.”

“Then do you have a partner?”

An elusive look. “Not really.”

 Oikawa took the chance: “So there’s sort of someone.”

“Yes,” said Kuroo. He was now edging on shy. Oikawa hated looking at his face transform into one of schoolboyish bashfulness. “He might even be applicable to your interview process. As in, really powerful. A game-changer. I’d have to ask him.”

“Okay,” agreed Oikawa. This sounded promising. “But I can follow up on you if the other guy agrees?”

“Yes.” He fixed Oikawa with a no-nonsense glare. “And- let me know when you get mock-ups for the piece, the publishers are getting antsy as shit. They’ll be upon us if it isn’t ready in the next few days.”

“Scary,” noted Oikawa. “I’ll interview you tomorrow if your boyfriend comes through quickly enough.”

“Please don’t tell him you referred to him as that,” said Kuroo as Oikawa began closing the door his way out. “We have a very delicate arrangement that I don’t want to endanger and so help me if you do-” He shut the door. Utmost discretion, Oikawa reviewed. The utmost discretion.

 ***

 Oikawa met the next proponent in a café, for change of pace. Kuroo had contacted his agent and everything. The day was a dreary grey as it drew closer to evening, and Oikawa considered pressing his face into the cool plastic table before him; he hadn’t slept much the night before, and it was making itself apparent. All he had to do now was wait until-

“Yello,” said his interviewee happily, sliding in across him with what was labelled a triple-shot espresso. Oikawa glanced up, and his jaw threatened to fall comically.

“How’re you? I’ve been thinking of you and Kuroo’s whole crew since the post-gala game. Such a good idea, by the way. Loved it.”

“Bokuto-san,” said Oikawa. “Thanks. And I’m well. I didn’t know- I was just wondering if you-"

Bokuto laughed and waved a dismissive hand, his loose black jacket bumping against his multiple watches. Oikawa realized he had been wrong, earlier- his hair wasn’t totally black, which he could see now that Bokuto had pulled it up in a small, tight ponytail to reveal a dyed-white undercut at the back of his head. “You don’t need to persuade me. I’ve actually been trying to do something like this for ages, even though Kuroo said it wasn’t a great idea for my career. But fuck that, you know?” He pounded his fist on the table; Oikawa flinched. The man was built like a brick shithouse. “Fuck that. I want to be me. I’m one of the best volleyball players in all of Japan and I’m still not allowed to be me? Fuck that.”

 “Ah,” said Oikawa, at a loss for words. Bokuto was better-versed at this than he was. “Right. Exactly. So you’d be willing to interview?”

“Obviously.” He gulped down his espresso. “I can even get it done today, if you like. I’m just so psyched to be doing this.”

Oikawa wondered if the monster of an espresso he just downed had anything to do with his levels of psychedness. “That would be great. Kuroo told me you’d be happy to accept, I just didn’t expect it to be so wholeheartedly.”

 “Haa. I’m glad to be of help.” Bokuto leaned in closer, his elbows inching up the table corner, and made an effort to subdue himself. “Kuroo’s really cool, right? My best friend, probably and a great boss, I bet. Did he say anything else about me, though? Like, why he recommended me, or...?” His fingers twitched around his cup.

Oikawa repressed the urge to roll his eyes. If he couldn’t deal with his own stressed one-sided affair with his best friend, he doubted he could assist another couple with their issues. “He said that you were just the man for the job. 

“That’s it?” A wilting look. Even his ponytail seemed to droop.

Outside, it began raining, and Oikawa drew his jacket in closer to his chest. It wouldn’t hurt to do some matchmaking. “And that you’re basically his boyfriend, but I shouldn’t tell you that, but that’s his problem for trusting me.”

Bokuto grinned and ducked his head into his shoulder. As if that would reduce how obvious his elation was. Oikawa took the opportunity to actually roll his eyes, but silently pondered how it was sweet that- well- two people were getting to experience something so nice together. He felt a little less chilled, and loosened his grip on his lapels. “Let me know when you’re ready for some opening statements.”

Chapter Text

Sugawara’s list eventually came through, and the rest of the week was spent contacting the leads and interviewing. Ushijima was pleasantly surprised at the number that had agreed, eventually, in varying places: A coach here, an older basketball retiree there, even a soccer commentator. Two current swimmers and tennis player made eight, including Bokuto, Kuroo, and Takemoto. The problem was the last two, but Oikawa had set aside that for later. 

He was also developing a knot in the base of his back from how often he was curved over his desk, arranging and formatting his section of the article. Interviewing was something of an emotional experience. People were forthcoming, and would occasionally say something that would make Oikawa feel tight in the throat or exhausted. He disliked the way their statements made him feel picked-apart and transparent. He had had half a mind to flee when Kageyama and Hinata began talking about their partnership “on and off the court” and their families and their misunderstandings and their labor and their… whatever it was.

Finally, Iwaizumi was also regularly visiting the office now. That was another thing that had knots developing in his shoulders (Oikawa suspected the newfound susceptibility to knots came in part with the age). He had started coming because he was no longer feuding with Oikawa and, unsurprisingly, was one of Matsukawa’s leads for physical wellness. Being a chiropractor and all that. 

This was secondary to the fact that he would bring Oikawa his morning coffee nowadays and chat with him for short spurts of time throughout the time. Matsukawa would make eyes (or eyebrows) from over Iwaizumi’s shoulder when they talked like this, which Oikawa particularly abhorred. 

“Don’t bend like that,” chided Iwaizumi, walking into his office. “You’re going to strain your spinal erectors.”

A beat. “How forward of you,” said Oikawa coyly. 

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes, but Oikawa could tell he was amused. He set Oikawa’s gingerbread latte down. “We get it, you’re needlessly suggestive. Try another personality trait.”

“I’ll have you know it’s timeless! Why change something so classic.” 

“Weren’t you the one always talking about how I needed a change of wardrobe every two seconds?”

Oikawa stood up and stretched (his lower back was weak, and felt trebly). “Ouch… And so I did. And you listened! Your look now is definitely- better.” He faltered near the end, hoping to not betray his newfound (or refound) attraction to Iwaizumi. 

“Your back’s hurting, huh?” said Iwaizumi. He was already behind Oikawa, and digging his thumbs expertly into the two spots directly above his sacrum. That was the other thing about Iwaizumi, now: he was so used to being a professional that he was no longer self-conscious about casual physical contact. The reverse had occurred to Oikawa since the time-switch. The first time Iwaizumi had massaged his neck, Oikawa had lurched out of his grip so violently that he nearly beheaded the water cooler in the break room. Matsukawa had had to leave the room to calm down. “I told you so.” 

“Thanks,” said Oikawa carefully once Iwaizumi stepped away again. He always searched Iwaizumi’s face after those interactions, to see if he looked as flustered as Oikawa felt, but his face was often blank. “It’s been hurting like hell this week.”

“How’s the interviewing going?” He leaned over and began reading Oikawa’s current iteration of arrangement and wording. Oikawa had been delighted despite himself when he had gotten Iwaizumi’s verbal approval over the project: an article like this would have changed my life when I was fifteen. It was exactly what he wanted to hear, given that a young Iwaizumi was the key audience he had fixed in his mind.

“Bad. Good. It’s… hard to swallow. I’m still new to this.” 

Iwaizumi let out a huff of a laugh and looked into his own cup of coffee. “Yeah. I’ve heard you say that before.”

Cryptic. Oikawa sat back down, and let his weary eyes re-focus on the papers before him. “I just need two more people to agree to the entire thing. Then I can make final edits.”

 “You need prolific athletes, right? Why not just do yourself? I thought you’d jump for something like that.”

“Me?!” Oikawa looked up at him wildly. “There’s no way. What would I even say?”

Iwaizumi scratched his stubble (which was growing on Oikawa). “Psh. Don’t make it too long if you’re still ‘new’, as you put it. But it would work, wouldn’t it? It’s sort of stupid you haven’t already done it. You’re post-Olympics, for crying out loud. That would make a huge dent.”

Oikawa realized it was, in fact, weird that he had not considered himself as a candidate. “I mean… I guess. I’ll think about it. A blurb couldn’t hurt too much… But what about the other one?”

 “I’m sure someone will turn up. We’re everywhere.” He left with a cool, finger-to-forehead salute- something young Oikawa would have teased him over but older Iwaizumi wore too well to ridicule.

Oikawa did manage to create a haphazard blurb on himself, but Ushijima scoffed upon reading it the following day. “Why are you pretending to be at ease with yourself when you’re clearly not? The demographic we’re aiming for would likely balk at this brazen dishonesty.” 

“Then what am I supposed to write?” yelled Oikawa. He had stayed up late last night, trying to piece together the most idealistic and uplifting phrases for the blurb. “If you haven’t forgotten, I’m still practically eighteen.”

Ushijima raised his eyebrows. “That could work in our favor. Try writing it from your eighteen-year-old perspective.” He handed the paper back to Oikawa. “We don’t have that much time left, truthfully. How are you going to incorporate the last interviewee’s data into the formatting by tomorrow morning?”

 “That’s another thing. I may not have actually found said tenth interviewer.” He had tried some last-minute house-visits, but no one else was ready to do it on such short notice.

“Fuck,” stated Ushijima plainly.

 “Don’t worry,” said Matsukawa, waving from his corner of the projects room. He was in the middle of talking to high school players from the local area, and had even been back to Sendai yesterday to talk to the current Aoba Josai captain. Oikawa was glad he was handling the casual athleticism portion of the article. “I got something for that. I’ll fit it in by tonight.”

Oikawa frowned. “Who?” 

“A friend of a friend. No need to be nosy.” 

“That’s rich! You could bear to stop making those ridiculous faces every time I talk to-”

“Hey,” interrupted Iwaizumi, coming up behind him. “I have to go on some urgent business at the hospital. But I wanted to wish all of you good luck on the pitch presentation tomorrow before I go- I’m probably not going to be up in time for it. So… good luck.” He patted Oikawa on the back and waved to the rest of the room before dashing out. 

“How does he always do that?” said Oikawa. “Show up behind me like that.”

“Fated encounters,” said Sugawara. He had volunteered to be part of the motley taskforce for the project. Oikawa had found some of the pain of properly reciting the backgrounds of the couples interviewed was eased by Sugawara’s flair for romantic narrative. “That, or your friends don’t tell you when he’s walking up behind you.”

“Definitely the first one,” said Matsukawa. 

***

Oikawa was struggling with his blurb. Matsukawa covering for the last interviewee lessened some of the weight he felt on his head, but- he still didn’t know what to write on. Every time he sat to pen something down he felt like a liar. As if he knew anything about being out; the entire thing had been conveniently thrust upon him from the moment he had been given this body. He didn’t remember how his parents reacted. He didn’t recall if he had to fight with them about it, or if they pretended not to hear.

He went on a run around the block to calm himself down, but found to his unhappiness that his knee pain flared far quicker than usual. He stopped at a cornerstone before he was at even half his normal distance, and noticed he was near Iwaizumi’s apartment. It was likely Iwaizumi was still out, but it didn’t hurt to try.

He took the elevator instead of the stairs this time (his legs hurt too much to try that again) and regained his breath. He always savored the sensation of his cheeks filling up with blood after a brisk, chilly run; he didn’t even mind that he was getting a bit snotty and his eyes were watering from the cold.

Iwaizumi was home, as it happened. “Kondo just left,” he said, letting Oikawa in. “I thought you were him, and that he forgot something. He’s out on some work stuff.” 

“Cool,” said Oikawa, pouring himself some water. “I was just in the area. I tried running, but I didn’t realize my knee was so busted… and I’m having trouble finishing my blurb for the article. Seeing as I don’t remember a lot of my coming out process.

“Come sit,” gestured Iwaizumi at a recliner. Oikawa did, as Iwaizumi sat on a stool nearby. Behind them, a fake fire in a fireplace- warm nonetheless- burned away, quickly heating up Oikawa’s right side and bringing feeling back to his ears. “I can look at your knee right now if you want.”

He nodded, and was relieved his cheeks were already red from the icy run. Iwaizumi drew his right leg up, slowly, and peeled away his sweats. Oikawa’s leg looked pale in Iwaizumi’s tanner hands. His hands were positively burning against his calves, seemingly as hot as the fire. 

“I’m so hairy,” he noted. “I didn’t know you get more hairy after eighteen.”

“Puberty doesn’t finish until twenty for most men,” said Iwaizumi. “Though I am surprised you don’t wax. It seems like the sort of thing you’d do.” 

“Is that some sort of underhanded comment?” 

“Not at all. Many professional athletes tend to. I figured you’d still do it after retiring.” He began to shift Oikawa’s kneecap under the skin- Oikawa blanched, he hated seeing that every time- and started massaging at the bump of muscle directly above it with one hand. The other hand pinched behind his knee, putting pressure on the walls around the divot where his leg bent. “Your kneecap is a lot looser than it should be. If it were me, I’d have assigned you to continue light, regular physical therapy even after you left the team. In fact… I reckon that’s what anyone would have assigned, and you just haven’t been doing it.” He looked at Oikawa, disappointment written in his scowl.

“Don’t look at me that way! I can’t be held totally responsible, I didn’t even know I had to do that.”

“Hmph. So you say. You also said you were having trouble with the blurb, right? I can read it for you if you want.”

Oikawa pulled it up on his phone and felt nervous for no apparent reason. 

“I’m Oikawa Tooru, a retired volleyball Gold-medalist Olympian,” read off Iwaizumi. He peered at Oikawa. “That’s a mouthful. Hm… I’m bisexual, which I’ve known for some time in my life… I have had various relationships, not all of them successful… I didn’t know I was who I was because of who I wanted to be for volleyball… okay, I see your problem. It’s shit.”

“Thank you,” said Oikawa dryly. “Thanks so much.” 

Iwaizumi went back to systematically massaging his legs, and looked at Oikawa again. The weight of his gaze made him shrink into the cushions a little more. “You’re still trying to write from your current perspective, which you obviously don’t have. I mean, I basically believed you before, but this confirms you don’t know who are you at present. Why don’t you write a letter to yourself from your eighteen-year-old self? That way, you can spend most of it in the mindset you understand.”

“I guess that makes sense.” He pulled his leg away, and Iwaizumi got up and rubbed his hands oddly on his jeans. He went to the kitchen and rummaged through his fridge.

“You staying for dinner?” he asked Oikawa, looking back at him. “I have some stuff we can microwave. Kondo might not be back till later ‘cause of work, and I have extra food. You can work on your blurb in the meantime.”

“Okay,” agreed Oikawa. They had leftover noodles and hamburger steak quietly, as Iwaizumi worked on a paper and Oikawa worked on his blurb-turned-letter. It was very pleasant, and Oikawa- to his delight- could feel Iwaizumi looking at him unprompted one or five times in this duration. The letter-to-self was also much easier to try and tackle than what he was previously doing, and by dessert (boxed ice-cream), he was finished with his first draft. 

“I’ll get going, then,” said Oikawa. “I’ll show you the finished thing tomorrow, after the pitch. Even if it doesn’t go great.”

“Stop doubting yourself, dumbass. I already said good luck this afternoon so I’m not going to say it again.”

“Such a gentle, reassuring soul you are,” said Oikawa, walking out the doorway. “I don’t know how I lived without you all these years. See you later.”

He blew a rasperry at Oikawa, and then seemed surprised to have done it in the first place. “Yeah, yeah. Bye.”

***

The board room was filled with the same people Oikawa had seen the first time. He had made sure to dress professionally this time around, but still compulsively smoothed down non-existent wrinkles down the front panels of his suit. Beside him, Ushijima (completely upright) and Matsukawa (rather slouched) stood. 

“So?” said Kuroo from the far end of the table. His reading glasses were tucked into the front corner of his button-up. “Go on.”

 “I’ll start this off by saying that several things have changed in my life over the last week,” said Oikawa levelly. “It came to my attention that I would not have made certain mistakes in my athletic career and in the course of growing up had I had some guidance from those who I looked up to. Number, for example.” He shuffled his feet awkwardly. “Simple mistakes, like ignoring the limits of my body, or more impactful ones, like ignoring my sexuality for my career.”

Matsukawa stepped forward “And I know that not every reader of Number is a high-level athlete, either. But our content doesn’t provide much for those kinds of readers. Even among higher-level athletes, there’s still sport for fun, but we eschew all of that in favor of presenting Number as a strictly professional brand that’s drowning in advertisement.”

Ushijima cleared his throat. “We can’t do too much about the last portion, given our distressed financial situation, but we are fully able to provide enhanced, more relatable content by broadening our image.” He clicked a button on his phone which brought their presentation up, complete with the mock-ups of interviewees on each slide. “Twelve figures from Japan’s general athletic history, current and past, agreed to interview about the relationship between their status as an athlete and their sexuality. Local intramural players and high-school teams across a variety of sports and prefectures were also consulted to discuss their reason for playing their sport, and the value it brought to their personal life. We also included things like their favorite warm-ups and post-workout meals, and asked them a variety of questions, such as how they resolve within-team disputes, or whether they find they can rely on their teammates for emotional support. 

He clicked to the next slide. “Finally, five physical therapists, three chiropractic physicians, and two CBT therapists provided insights on the care and keeping of any athlete’s physical self, as well as comments specialized for a particular sport, were they knowledgeable on it. We endeavored to present a full range of wellbeing practices that athletes- both casual and professional- should aim to incorporate into their training both on and off their courts.”

“Now,” said Oikawa. “We are all quite aware that this would be a hugely different direction for Number. But we’re not trying to stop talking about professionals and their strengths and plays, or whatever product is best on the market for training. But we want to set a tone that Number is for all athletes. That it isn’t above relating to its younger- or outgrown- audiences. And that, on a more personal level, that some writers here understand that the culture of being an athlete can be stifling and imperfect, but we can grow beyond that. Everyone we interviewed for the sexuality segment- including myself-” Ushijima began clicking through the slides for him- “-were unequivocal that had we known other non-straight players existed in the field when we were younger, things would have gone a lot less painfully for us. We have a chance to really make a difference now. And prevent that from happening again.”

The last slide clicked through, but it was- to Oikawa’s shock- Iwaizumi in his doctor’s uniform. He didn’t have time to think too intensely about this as the three of them bowed; he felt trembly again, but it was not because of his back. When he raised back up, he noticed Sugawara at the far corner of the room beaming at him and giving a surreptitious thumbs-up. Kuroo looked pleased, his own smile wide enough that his canine peeked out- and most people in the boardroom began clapping, slowly and then with increasing fervor. Oikawa let out the breath that had been trapped somewhere underneath his belly. Matsukawa quietly muttered, “Oh, thank fuck for that.” 

“You’ve really surprised us,” said Kuroo. “Even though I’d known the pitch for some time. All of you, but you especially, Oikawa-san. I know this was initially your approach. And,” he added, steepling his fingers today, and smiling even wider, “If anyone has any qualms they want to voice, go ahead, though I hope to remind everyone that- as the presentation has confirmed- as an openly bisexual man myself, who is also your boss, I hope none of the criticism depends on close-minded standards of masculine athleticism.”

The few people in the boardroom who had looked guarded during the presentation before were now downright alarmed. There were eventually a few comments and questions about the target audience and disclosure forms, about future prospects and the change in tone of the magazine, but Ushijima and Matsukawa were adept in response.

 “We can look into more of the details once one of you email me the pdfs of the mockup,” said Kuroo, eventually, settling down the room. “But very promising stuff. We can have a meeting tomorrow about contacting the publishers and doing some focus groups- until then, congrats. Have some fun, take the rest of the day off. Sugawara, do you know if we have some celebratory drinks around here?” 

“How celebratory?”

Kuroo shot him a wry look. “Classy. And no greater than 18%.”

 “Good idea. Save the 40% for Bokuto-san.” He went out to fetch it, leaving an exasperated Kuroo blushing in the forehead.

 “That went well,” said Oikawa to Matsukawa. “I didn’t know that Iwaizumi was your last guy. No offense, but… he isn’t prolific or anything, right?”

Matsukawa flicked him in the forehead. “Stupid Oikawa. I thought it would be a good way to tie together the casual athletes and wellbeing part of the article to your part. Also, he’s one of the biggest chiropractors in all of Tokyo. Like, at least half of all professionals around here who get injuries go through him. That’s prolific in its own way.”

“I didn’t know that.” A surge of pride bloomed in Oikawa’s chest. “Good for him.”

“It really is. You should go visit him today. Tell him the big news. Maybe even read his interview, on the way there.”

“Oh?” said Oikawa, but he had already decided that this was a sound piece of advice. He took a cab to Iwaizumi’s house soon after gathering his things. Matsukawa had emailed him the full pdf, so he scrolled to the last page he had left blank last night.

“Could you introduce yourself? Name, sport, practice.

Dr. Iwaizumi Hajime. I used to play volleyball at a high-school level, but I play it now too, just recreationally. I’m a chiropractor and physical therapist, specialized for sports-induced physical trauma.

  We’re interviewing you for both the wellness section and the sexuality section, which is unique. We did that because- as many readers probably know- you’re one of the top chiropractors in Tokyo, and have serviced many national athletes because of that. But how has your relationship to sports related to your sexuality?

It’s weird. I knew I was gay a bit after I became a teenager, but my status as a volleyball player at a powerhouse school definitely made me reluctant to follow up on it. I was scared to come out, to date- even if it was in secret. I thought being the sort of athlete I was, and built at that, meant that all my friends would shun me for being something so… uncharacteristic, I guess? I had a long-standing crush at that point in my life on a childhood friend, and he was on the team too. [He laughs]. This is stupid. Let it show on the record that the idiot interviewing me was also on my high-school team.

Hey...

Anyways. He was the captain, and he was really popular with girls. Just the image of a sports captain, you know? I knew he wouldn’t have wanted to be associated with me if he knew I was gay. That also kept me closeted for longer.  

Should the record specify who he is? I can edit this out.

Don’t specify. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t about him, is it? I came out because, but also despite of him. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the end of high school anyhow. And certain friends stayed with me throughout it. Let the record show that I’m giving the interviewer a significant look. So I went to college and joined the intramural team, and I came out really quickly there to make sure there wasn’t so much suspense around it. My teammates weren’t all accepting. Most people were apathetic, which I almost preferred. One or two were antagonistic about it. I was a good enough player that they couldn’t really make a huge fuss about it, though. But I always wonder: If I wasn’t a great player, what then? If I wasn’t read as a buff dude, what then? I don’t think it would have been so forgiving.  

More currently, only a small portion of my clientele is aware of my sexuality. It’s less high-stakes but I’m still conscious of it. My clientele is mostly straight men, and a lot of those types are afraid of gay men touching them, even if it’s completely professional. The volleyball players usually try to shoot the shit with me when they find out I play casually and keep up with current players. I never liked locker-room talk, since so much of it is directly reflective of the straight male athlete’s culture, and I’m no better at it now. I hope those patients think I’m just churlish.

Sure. What would you like other LGBT+ athletes to know? Younger and older readers alike?

Fuck everyone who isn’t there for you, but also it’s okay to be scared. It’s normal to question your masculinity, especially because the way sports works is so much about just drilling into your head that you should be a muscled-out freak who’s, honestly, probably a bully. In some way or another. It sucks to be in that position and know that you’d otherwise be the poor shit getting it handed to him. But you should know that plenty of us exist in these spaces. If you wanna duck your head down, keep things to yourself and play a good game, do that. If you wanna be out and fight any jackass who tries to start something during practice, do that. And if you wanna leave your sport because it’s not worth the discomfort of hiding yourself but it’s also not worth spending your energy fighting for, then do that. It’s about you and your security. Your sport will still be there if you leave and you can come back if you change your mind.

Oikawa finished the last few sentences of the first page as he climbed up to Iwaizumi’s flat. The guy had grown up to be remarkably sensitive; but then again, maybe he always was. He wished that this shrewd, older Iwaizumi could have somehow talked sense into his younger self.  He tucked his phone away as Iwaizumi greeted him warmly (or as warmly as his gruff demeanor would allow) into his flat. He looked drained. The night before had probably run late. 

He rubbed his eyes, and gave Oikawa a distracted half-smile. “So how’d it go?”

“Good. Great, even. Thanks to you coming through for the last interviewee. Really appreciated that.” He gently knocked his fist into Iwaizumi’s chest. “You didn’t have to do that.” 

“No problem. It was a favor for Matsukawa, anyways.” 

“Rude!” A harder punch, which Iwaizumi grabbed at the wrist with his hand. His grip was firm and warm. “And I didn’t know you were one of the most trafficked chiros in the city.”

 A shrug, and he let go of the Oikawa’s arm. “Never came up.”

“I read about a lot of things that ‘never came up ‘in your interview, anyways,” admitted Oikawa. “I only read the first page, but it was… well, I’m sorry for having made you feel that way.” He did feel authentically contrite, and hoped it showed on his face. 

“I said it wasn’t relevant anymore in the interview, didn’t I? No need to bring it up. Besides, I want to read your blurb now.”

Oikawa pulled it up again on his phone and gave it to him. He paced to the leather recliner he had sat in yesterday and sat on its leg, staring at the floor. He didn’t want to look at Iwaizumi’s expressions as he read through it; what if he thought it was still contrived? But nothing of the kind happened. Iwaizumi came over and gave a side-hug, pulled Oikawa’s head into his hip.

“Hey,” he said, softly. He put a hand on his nape. “I didn’t know you were that fucked up over us not being friends after.”

 “You never got to hear my side of it. I mean, I don’t even know my side of it, right? But this is how I felt when I first found out we weren’t friends last week. It’s the closest I can get to knowing what I really felt like.” He let out a tremulous sigh; he had been turning this over in his head the moment Iwaizumi had left his apartment, the first time. “I knew that if it got to the point I was ignoring you coming to my house, and if I really was- am- bi, then it probably had a lot to do with me being scared of myself. Not just disgusted of you.” 

“I figured. But it’s weird to hear you admit it.” He pulled Oikawa to his feet, and then reached his hand to his back pocket to wrangle something out. “But while you’re here, I got something for you as congratulations. I was digging up some stuff at my old house a little while ago, and I found this.” 

Oikawa stared. It was the packet of comet dust from that night. Weathered and faded and crumpled up, but the very same. The thought that this had a part in what had happened entered his head viciously. Iwaizumi continued, looking thoughtfully at the packet himself. “I took it that night, even after you threw my diorama out the window. The wishing dust was such an idiotic gift! I was just a stupid gay boy.”

 “Thanks,” said Oikawa cautiously. He hadn’t known he had done something so terrible to Iwaizumi’s project. He took the packet. “And, sorry. If I haven’t already apologized about that before.

 “It’s whatever,” said Iwaizumi. He did seem at peace with it, and even smiled at Oikawa. “Things happen. You were a dick, anyways.”

Oikawa scratched behind his ear. “I know that we don’t know each other as well anymore. But I also wanted to thank you for helping me out these last few weeks. You’re sort of the reason I had the idea for the project in the first place. I wrote about it with you and I in mind, I guess…”

Iwaizumi looked rosy around the ears, and for a moment, startled. “Oh! Oh. Yeah. I figured. I could see myself needing something like that when I was seventeen.”

Oikawa had reason to suspect that perhaps Iwaizumi still harbored romantic feelings towards him. He had spent his valuable time getting him little favors of affection for the last week, had saved this comet dust packet for probably longer than he claimed, and had bore the tremendous stress that was acclimating Oikawa to this new time. The sight of his red ears- a feature Oikawa had reveled in exploiting in their shared teenagerhood- felt like a surreptitious sign-off that well, yes, Iwaizumi probably did still think of him at least a little tenderly. 

Oikawa began sweating, but hoped the adrenaline of the pitch’s reception would pull him through. “I don’t know if things are going to go back to my normal. I guess you were right about it being retrograde amnesia. I just wanted to say…” Sweating more. “That I realized I like you. And I think you like me too. I can tell a little better now. Sort of stupid I didn’t realize before, when we were younger.”

Iwaizumi looked stunned. He stepped back. “…I’m not sure what you want me to say right now.”

“Do you like me back?” He regretted saying it, and cringed to himself at the childish lilt of it.   

Iwaizumi said his next words carefully. “I have a boyfriend. Our anniversary is in a few weeks. And like you said- I don’t even really know you.” 

It certainly did not hurt less, hearing about their lack of close acquaintance for a second time. “I don’t think you even really like Kondo,” he settled for after several moments passed. “You never talk about him. And you’re not saying you don’t like me, right now, which means you probably do… right?”

Iwaizumi glowered, tension entering his frame. “I don’t know what you want. You think that just because we talk a little bit and get drunk together, everything’s in the past? Sure. I really liked you when we were young. I liked you a lot, and I put up with all your bullshit because I was made stupid by my devotion to you.” He pointed to himself, now. “I would’ve done so many things for you! I did do so many things for you! If I’m being honest, I don’t like Kondo even half as much as I used to like you, but there’s merit to that, you know? I don’t have to be scared I’ll lose myself by being in a relationship with him. It doesn’t matter that I liked you then. It doesn’t matter that- fine- I like you now, a bit. So what!”

But now Oikawa was cross too. “So- so what? I just had my entire life forgotten and had to spend the last week trying to figure out who I am, now, and it took ages and ages of every single fucking person, including you, telling me that I needed to learn how to be okay with myself and the way I love and you’ve been living a total farce the whole time!”

Iwaizumi’s shoulders slumped a miniscule amount. He had struck a nerve. “Great. You write a few pages, and you’re suddenly the expert on being in loving, gay relationships. I don’t know why I expected better.”

“Stop! Ugh!” Oikawa dug his hand into his hair and clenched. “You’re just mad because you know you’re lying to yourself! And you’re mad at me because I know you are too! I’m not saying we have to start dating or anything, just that you should be honest with yourself too!” 

“Forget this,” said Iwaizumi, stomping away. The tips of his ears were blazing. “Get out of here. I thought we could be friends again, not that you’d try to life-advice me into breaking up with my boyfriend and somehow manage to destroy all my relationships. For the second time!” 

He didn’t need to be told twice. Oikawa stormed out through the front door, and walked faster and faster until he was running on the street outside in the general direction of his apartment. He was angry because this time he knew he was right. For once in his life, he could see Iwaizumi’s own problems, and could help him, but the idiot wouldn’t listen. And it wasn’t fair that he had to grow up and deal with this whole gay thing and then not even have this, and that he felt guilty because he realized how often Iwaizumi probably felt like this when they were teenagers, and that he could feel his eyes burning angrily as he began to cry.

He couldn’t see very well through the blur, so he tripped on something as he ran- a sidewalk crack, or something- and the packet tumbled out of his hands and exploded. Glitter fluttered around him as he planted his ass on cold, hard concrete, and nursed his bruised knee. A knee that hurt like a bitch because it had been notoriously not taken-care-of. And now he was old enough that the pain was constant and consistent and flared in the mornings, something that also instilled a deep sense of betrayal. “Fuck,” he swore, wiping away his tears lest someone had the silly thought that he wanted to be comforted. “Fuck! Why can’t I just fucking be eighteen again!” And he buried his eyes into his trousers, letting it absorb his tears as he let himself feel very sorry for himself, that he was alone and would always feel lost and how he should’ve worn a scarf because it was cold and winter was setting in. 

“Ugh!” he said, again, snottily. He lifted his head, to see if he was making as large a spectacle as he thought he was, but he wasn’t on the street anymore. He was in his room. His actual room, not his flat’s room. There was Iwaizumi’s odd little diorama, by the foot of his bed. Untouched. And there was- a noise- being made against the window, a sort of pelting sound. He got up so quickly that he snapped his knee somewhat, but that didn’t matter. He opened the window.

 “Fuck, just come down, you idiot! How many times are you going to close the window on me again?”

 The ire in Iwaizumi’s voice had never sounded more melodious. There he was, glaring at him from his moonlit lawn, and all Oikawa wanted to do was jump down and tackle him. “Iwa-chan! Iwa-chan! Do you think I can make this jump?”

Iwaizumi stopped glaring and looked highly alarmed. “I’m still angry, but please do not fucking do that.” 

“Okay!” He raced down his stairs and outside, barefoot and in just pajamas. The grass was cool and wet on his feet as he tumbled to a halt in front of Iwaizumi, hanging from his front and he tried his best to hold him close. “You’re so small!” he exclaimed. “So small and cute! Just the way I remembered you were!”

 “…Okay,” said Iwaizumi, holding him by his elbows. He looked down at him, completely bewildered. Oikawa liked seeing his wrinkle-less face and clean-shaven chin. “I don’t know what’s happening right now.” 

Oikawa got to his standing height again, but left his arms looped around Iwaizumi’s shoulders. “Just say whatever you wanted to say to me before!” Iwaizumi could say anything, even talk about his favorite stupid bugs, and Oikawa would delight in hearing each word. “I promise I’ll listen. I’ll listen for as long as you want, because you’re right and I’m wrong and I know that now.”

“Who are you?” said Iwaizumi, still mystified. “I mean, not that I’m against what you’re saying. But, seriously, what’s happening?”

Oikawa rolled his eyes, and held Iwaizumi by the face. He shook it the slightest bit so that Iwaizumi’s cheeks squished together adorably. “Just say something before I say it first, stupid.”

Iwaizumi gulped, and pulled Oikawa’s hands off his face. “I wanted to talk about our fight. Why I was upset. I didn’t know how to tell you something. I realized… or I’ve known, for a few years, now, that I’m, um, gay. I just wanted to tell you.” His eyes searched Oikawa’s face worriedly as he stepped away.

“Why are you walking away?” said Oikawa, stepping towards him.

“In case you need some space.” He looked up, mortified. “In case you thought I was coming onto you by touching you or something.”

 “I would never think something so stupid,” he responded. “Well. Not anymore, anyways. And- Iwaizumi, that’s fine. It’s better than fine. Thank you for telling me and trusting me with that.” He grabbed Iwaizumi’s hands with his own, and drew him closer once more. Iwaizumi’s eyes were as wide as saucers, and looked even bigger in the dim light of the moon. 

“Oikawa?” he said, haltingly. “Why are you being so- understanding?” 

Oikawa wanted to shout that he loved him, or something equally obnoxious, but he restrained himself. “Oh, right. I have some thinking to do and experiences to get through, but I might as well tell you that I’m bi. In case that was something you cared about.”

Iwaizumi was stunned silent. He blinked many, many times at Oikawa. His face was so sweet and delightfully innocent that Oikawa could have cried. “You’re… 

“Yes.”

“Since when…?”

Oikawa smiled so wide it hurt his cheeks. “Don’t be reductive, Iwa-chan. It’s not something that just pops up. It’s been there for a while. Someone really smart told me that.”

“You’ve talked to other people about this?” exclaimed Iwaizumi. “Who?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, waving his hand impatiently. “More important things are at hand. I know I should wait to say this,” he continued, “But I don’t really care. So: I like you. Romantically.”

“Ah,” said Iwaizumi, very weakly. Oikawa was proud to note that- even though he tried to hide it- he could see Iwaizumi buckled slightly at the knees. “That’s…”

Oikawa held his face again, softly. Iwaizumi looked dumbfounded. “And I’d like to kiss you, if that’s alright.”

“You…” He gulped, and then nodded. He leaned in, and then they were kissing, and Oikawa relished the strain from bending his neck and how soft Iwaizumi’s lips were and how his chest was beating so fast it almost hurt.

He pulled away, but kept Iwaizumi’s face in his grip. Iwaizumi, he noticed, was also breathing quicker than normal. And his ears were positively crimson. “I hope this means you like me back?” He was relieved to hear that he sounded far less pathetic and afraid this time. In fact, he reckoned his breathiness made him sound even more charming. 

“How did you know already?” asked Iwaizumi in response. “You’re using your flirty voice. You know I like you back already.”

“Maybe you’re not as inscrutable as you think you are.”

Iwaizumi frowned. “No, I’m not. You’ve just been incredibly dense about this one thing since forever.”

“Are these your first words to me as my new lover? Cute.”

The cicadas were chirping loudly, but Iwaizumi was louder. “Lover?!”

“We can take it slow,” soothed Oikawa. “If that’s too much for you right now. Regardless… Sorry I was an ass, earlier. I was scared of myself. I was scared of you leaving.” He kissed Iwaizumi again, and felt it in his spine, in all the places he had had knots.

“That’s alright,” warbled Iwaizumi, once he drew away. “It’s in the past.”

And for the first time in a while, Oikawa didn’t mind hearing that.